Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university.
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Lessons Of The Katyushas
By: Steven Plaut
People have very short memories. Most Israelis do not recall the
events that have led up to the rain of Katyushas and other missiles
upon Israeli civilians these past two weeks.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to drive out the terrorists. It
then continued to hold southern Lebanon as a buffer zone, to keep the
terrorists away from the border, in alliance with the South Lebanon
Army (SLA) militia, until the Israeli government under Ehud Barak
ordered the area turned over to the Hizbullah in exchange for…nothing.
In the late 1990's, some Israelis, led by the Labor Party, began
to turn against the government as Israeli deaths continued to mount in
the war of attrition in southern Lebanon between the IDF and the
terrorists. Meanwhile, the Israeli Left had undergone a process of
radicalization, in large part because of Lebanon.
What began as mere disagreement by the Left over tactical issues
in what had been regarded as an essentially just occupation of south
Lebanon morphed into an outburst of openly anti-Israel extremism.
Inevitably, the Labor Party joined the far left in demanding an
unconditional capitulation by Israel in Lebanon.
It was Labor prime minister Barak who in the summer of 2000
implemented the unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli troops from
Lebanon. The withdrawing Israeli army abandoned the fighters of the
South Lebanese Army and their families to the mercies of Hizbullah.
Many SLA members were murdered.
Barak's withdrawal took place under fire, with Hizbullah and
others shooting at the retreating Israeli troops to demonstrate their
contempt and show the world that the cowardly Jews were being driven
out.
Barak's capitulation was a parody of Dunkirk. But the Israeli
chattering classes saw it as not only a great victory but as a
precedent for solving all the problems of Gaza and West Bank.
This writer, like many others, predicted for years that northern
Israel would be attacked by masses of missiles and that Israel would
be forced to invade and re-conquer south Lebanon, at a large cost in
Israeli lives, to drive out the terrorists Barak had installed there.
I also warned that when that happened, no southern Lebanese
Christian or Muslim, remembering how Israel had betrayed the SLA,
would believe any promises made by Israeli leaders. As a result,
Israel would have trouble finding local allies and informants.
It occurs to me that now would be as good a time as any to sum
up everything that has been learned in the past few weeks about the
Middle East conflict – that is, everything the Israeli government and
chattering classes refused to learn during the past two decades.
Here are 40 lessons from the Katyusha war on the Jews:
1. Nice fences do not stop missiles, rockets, and mortars.
2. Complete removal of Israeli forces and Jewish settlers from
an area merely signals Israeli weakness and invites escalated Arab
terror and aggression.
3. Hizbullah and Hamas cannot be defeated with air strikes.
There is no effective alternative to ground invasion and ongoing
Israeli military control of the ground.
4. Unless the Israeli military controls the ground on the other
side of fences, those fences achieve nothing.
5. Goodwill gestures by Israel increase terror.
6. Goodwill gestures by Israel never produce moderation of Arab
goals and demands, but rather the opposite.
7. Terror is not caused by settlements but by the removal of settlements.
8. Terror is not caused by Israeli military occupation but by
the removal of Israeli military occupation.
9. It is impossible for two sovereign entities to exist between
the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
10. No matter how many concessions Israel makes the world will
always justify Arab terrorism because there will always be still one
more capitulation Israel fails to make.
11. No matter how nice Israel is to its Arab citizens and no matter
how many affirmative action programs it implements, Israel will always
be accused of being an "apartheid regime."
12. The Israeli far left is an openly anti-Semitic movement that
seeks Israel's destruction and automatically endorses the enemies of
Israel in nearly all things.
13. The Israeli Labor Party and its Kadima cousin may be more
effective at fighting terror, once they decide to do so, than Likud.
If it were a Likud government fighting Hizbullah, the Israeli Left
would take to the streets in mass demonstrations against Israeli
"imperialism and war crimes" and the Israeli media would declare that
half a million protesters had turned out.
14. The real enemy of Israel is not Arab fascism but Jewish leftism.
15. Much of the world has no qualms seeing Jewish civilians murdered
by terrorists.
16. The Israeli Left will oppose every conceivable act of Israeli
self-defense.
17. Israeli niceness and flexibility fan anti-Semitism.
18. Arab terrorists do not morph into statesmen.
19. Israel bashers do not care about dead Arab civilians, other than
as a useful tool with which to bludgeon Israel.
20. Many on the worldwide Left would not raise an eyebrow if Israeli
Jews were shipped off to concentration camps in cattle cars – except
perhaps to demand improved rail service.
21. The vast majority of Israeli Arabs and nearly all Israeli Arab
politicians support terrorism and wish to see Israel destroyed.
22. There are hundreds of Jewish professors in Israel who serve as
an academic Fifth Column and who collaborate with the enemies of their
country.
23. The Arabs will not accept an independent Israel within any set
of borders, no matter how small. Hence reducing Israel's territory
does nothing but signal weakness and destructibility.
24. The only country on earth expected to respond to the mass murder
of its civilians by turning of the other cheek is Israel. The only
country on earth that has spent years trying to defeat aggression and
terrorism by turning the other cheek is Israel.
25. No matter how Israel responds to aggression and terrorism, it
will always be seen in many quarters as a "disproportionate" response.
The only "proportionate" response is complete capitulation.
26. Those who claim that anti-Zionism is different and distinct from
anti-Semitism tend, on close inspection, to be anti-Semites
themselves.
27. The only people on earth whom the Left believes should be denied
the right to self-determination and self-defense are the Jews.
28. "Palestinians" are not a nation in any true sense of the term
and never were. They are simply Arabs who happened to migrate to
Western Palestine. They have no "right" to statehood.
29. Israeli leftists, rather than learn from the failures of their
policies and "ideas," complain that their policies are not applied
thoroughly enough.
30. The moral and legal responsibility for every single Arab
civilian killed or injured in the Middle East conflict rests squarely
on the shoulders of the Arab terrorists.
31. There is no moral or legal reason for Israel to refrain from
attacking terrorists and murderers when they hide among civilians.
32. Too many of the "anarchists" and others who protest against
Israel's security wall want the wall removed because they want
terrorists to murder Jewish civilians.
33. Palestinians are the Sudeten Germans of the Middle East.
34. There are no non-military solutions to the problem of terrorism.
35. One can only make warwith one's enemies. One can only make peace
with one's defeated enemies.
36. There are no significant differences between the agenda of the
PLO and the agenda of Hamas and Hizbullah.
37. One cannot make peace by pretending that war does not exist.
38. One cannot buy off anti-Semites and Islamofascists with trade
concessions and subsidies.
39. The only way to stop terrorism is to kill terrorists.
40. No terrorist has ever murdered anyone after he was executed.
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18973/Lessons_Of_The_Katyushas.html
1. Yes, anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism!
http://hnn.us/articles/28503.html
Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism: The Link
By Diana Muir
Ms. Muir is the author of Reflections in Bullough.s Pond: Economy and
Ecosystem in New England. The working title of her current project is:
What Good is a Nation; A Clear-Eyed Look at Nations and Nationalism.
This week, the Spanish Foreign Minister felt compelled to defend Prime
Minister Zapatero from charges of anti-Semitism.
Zapatero had donned the black-checked keffiyeh that is the symbol of
Palestinian determination to destroy the Jewish State and criticized
Israel for using .abusive force that does not protect innocent human
beings..1
It was all too familiar.
On any given day one can find some eminent European . a university
professor, high-ranking churchman, a parliamentarian . gravely explaining
to reporters that harsh and disproportionate criticism of Israel is not
anti-Semitic.
And their protestations sound plausible. After all, this is not your
grandfather.s anti-Semitism. Israel.s highly-educated critics do not
refuse to dine in restaurants that serve Jews, use epithets like .kike,.
or believe that Jews control the international financial markets and are
more likely than others to engage in shady business practices.
At least that is what I assumed until someone did the study.
Two Connecticut professors got curious about the constant denials that
extremely harsh critics of Israel were anti-Semitic. Edward H. Kaplan, the
William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Management Sciences, and
Charles A. Small, Director of Urban Studies, Southern Connecticut State
University, decided to examine the issue in formal way. Their paper,
.Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe,. appears in the
August issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution. 2
Kaplan and Small ask whether individuals expressing strong anti-Israel
sentiments, such as the statement by Ted Honderich, Emeritus Grote
Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College
London, that .those Palestinians who have resorted to necessary killing
have been right to try to free their people, and those who have killed
themselves in the cause of their people have indeed sanctified
themselves,. are more likely than the general population to also support
in such old-style anti-Semitic slurs as .Jews have too much power in our
country today..
The correlation was almost perfect. In a survey of 5,000 Europeans in ten
countries, people who believed that the Israeli soldiers .intentionally
target Palestinian civilians,. and that .Palestinian suicide bombers who
target Israeli civilians. are justified, also believed that .Jews don.t
care what happens to anyone but their own kind,. .Jews have a lot of
irritating faults,. and .Jews are more willing than others to use shady
practices to get what they want..
The study.s other interesting finding was that only a small fraction of
Europeans believe any of these things. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
flourish among the few, but those few are over-represented in Europe.s
newspapers, its universities, and its left-wing political parties.
For Americans who do not read the European press, the level of raw
anti-Semitism in European intellectual circles can be shocking.
A couple of years ago the French Ambassador at the Court of St. James,
Daniel Bernard, told his companions at a London dinner party that Israel
is a .shitty little country,. .Why,. he asked, .should the world be in
danger of World War Three because of those people?.3
Those people? Moderates heard echoes of old-fashioned anti-Semitism. But
the French Foreign Ministry stood behind their ambassador, calling
assertions that Bernard.s remarks were anti-Semitic "malevolent
insinuations."4
The British press agreed. Columnist Deborah Orr defended Ambassador
Bernard in the Independent. .Anti-Semitism is disliking all Jews,
anywhere, and anti-Zionism is just disliking the existence of Israel and
opposing those who support it,. explained Orr, who holds .the honest view
that in my experience Israel is shitty and little..5
Columnist Richard Woods summed up the attitude of the European
intelligentsia when he wrote that Ambassador Bernard.s remark was only
.apparently anti-Semitic..6
Kaplan and Small have shown otherwise. When you read, for example, the
opinion of Marc Gentilli, president of the French Red Cross, that the idea
of allowing Israel to join the International Red Cross and use the Star of
David on its ambulances is .disgusting,.7 you can be pretty sure that he,
along with Ambassador Bernard, Prime Minister Zapatero, President Chirac,
and the rest of Europe.s harsh critics of Israel, are very probably the
kind of old-fashioned anti-Semites who just don.t like Jews very much.
1 .Spanish Minister Objects . Says Criticism of Israel Not anti-Semitic.
International Herald Tribune, July 20, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/20/news/spain.php
2 Kaplan, Edward H. and Small, Charles A., .Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts
Anti-Semitism in Europe,. Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 50 No. 4,
August 2006, pp. 548-561 PDF
3 Tom Gross, . .A Shitty Little Country,. Prejudice and Abuse in Paris and
London,. National Review, Jan 10, 2002.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross011002.shtml
4 ..Anti-Semitic. French Envoy Under Fire,. BBC Dec. 20, 2001
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1721172.stm
5 Deborah Orr, .I.m fed up being called an anti-Semite,. Independent,
December 21, 2001, cited in Tom Gross, . .A Shitty Little Country,.
Prejudice and Abuse in Paris and London,. National Review, Jan 10, 2002.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross011002.shtml
6 Richard Woods in the, .When silence speaks volumes. London Sunday Times,
December 23, 2001, cited in Tom Gross, . .A Shitty Little Country,.
Prejudice and Abuse in Paris and London,. National Review, Jan 10, 2002.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross011002.shtml
7 Davis, Avi, .A Star-Crossed Resignation,. Washington Times, Jan 2, 2002,
http://www.mideasttruth.com/mda2.html
2. National Review Declares: Bibi saw it coming:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDliYjYwM2MyZDJjNjRmMzNkYWEzODI0ODdjNWY0NzQ=
3. http://hnn.us/articles/28321.html
Axis of Hypocrisy.Russia, US, UK, Italy, France Urge Israeli Restraint
By Edward Olshaker
4. Noam Chomsky Celebrates the Hezbollah:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=11&x_article=1151
5. Fighting Amalek:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13938178/site/newsweek/
6. What innocent Lebanese civilians?
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-dershowitz22jul22%2C0%2C7685210.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
7. Think Chomsky will attend?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060722/wl_nm/cambodia_rouge_dc
8. Treason Chic - the Jews for a Second Holocaust are already out with
their banners:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3279792,00.html
9. Israel's film producers are the closest thing the Hezbollah has to a
fan club in Israel. Ynet has an expose of these critters here
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3279357,00.html
alas in Hebrew only.
In an open letter, dozens of these "film producers" expressed their
support for Lebanese and Palestinian terrorism against Jews. They wrote
it just in time for an Arab film festival about to open in Paris.
The YNET piece has 1600 talkbacks at the moment and almost all of them are
denouncing these moonbats as traitors, while some are proposing to do
things to these traitors that could not be shown in a PG film.
1. While katyushas rain down on Israel, Ran HaCohen from the literature
department at the University of Tel Aviv has been busy celebrating and
promoting the Hizbollah. Think I am kidding? Here is HaCohen singing
the praises of the Hizbollah:
http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h081303.html . The web site in question,
antiwar.com, is a neo-nazi web site that also promotes the "theory" that
the Jews were behind the 911 attacks on the US.
Notice the bio on the right of that page,
where HaCohen brags of his being on the faculty of Tel Aviv University.
This piece was very widely reprinted, such as here -
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles7/HaCohen_Hizbollah.htm
and on many other anti-Semitic web sites enjoying the notoreity of an
Israeli celebrating the Hizbollah.
If you are upset that TAU has someone on its faculty promoting the
Hizbollah, why not tell the heads of TAU how you feel?
They can be reached via the information here:
Tel Aviv University:
President: http://www.tau.ac.il/president/president-e.html
Rector: http://www.tau.ac.il/president/president-e.html
Officers: http://www.tau.ac.il/officers-eng.html
Friends and Alumni Associations: http://www.tau.ac.il/friends-eng.html
Public Affairs: http://www.tau.ac.il/affairs-eng.html
2. A couple of days back, al-Jazeera ran a special on defending Hezbollah
and attacking Israel. One of those featured in the special was Haaretz
columnist Gideon Levy, who defending Hezbollah and attacked Israel.
3. An End to Peace thru Fantasizing?
The dangerous fantasy of peaceful Arab intent
Full story:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003138455_alexander20.html
By Edward Alexander
Special to The Times
The two-front war launched against Israel by the Hamas and Hezbollah
branches of the worldwide Islamic fascist movement -- the same folks who
brought us the recent Bombay massacre, to say nothing of 9/11 and the
London Underground abattoir of last summer -- has shattered many lives,
and will undoubtedly destroy many more.
Is there any hope that it will also shatter illusions tenaciously held by
accredited experts on the Arab-Israeli "conflict" (more accurately called
the Arab -- also Iranian -- war against Israel)?
For nearly 40 years, academic Middle East experts and State Department
inventors of quixotic "peace plans" have insisted that Israeli occupation
of "Arab lands" causes Arab hatred and terror and is the "root cause" of
the conflict; end the occupation, they have always said, and all will be
well.
How, then, is it that, starting the very day after its withdrawal from
Gaza last year and six years after its unilateral retreat from Lebanon,
Israel is under attack from both those places?
Would it not be closer to the truth to say that terror is caused far less
by Israeli military occupation than by the removal of that occupation?
Complete removal of Israeli forces and Jewish residents from an area
achieves nothing except to invite greater terror and aggression from
people who use every meter of land they control not to build their own
state but to destroy an existing state.
This is why the idea -- promoted by virtually every recent American (and
Israeli) administration -- of two sovereign entities, Jewish and Arab,
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is dangerous fantasy.
What, except historical amnesia, could have made the experts forget that
it was Arab hatred and aggression that led, in 1967, to occupation, and
not occupation that led to Arab hatred and violence? For 19 years,
starting in 1948, the Arabs had full possession of the "West Bank," theirs
to do with whatever they chose, and -- as always -- what they chose was
not an independent Palestinian state but incessant terrorist attacks on
Israel.
Fences afford Israel only temporary and partial protection; they cannot
keep out rockets and missiles, such as have been raining down on Israeli
towns in the south of the country ever since Hamas won the election in
Gaza (a voting result that could have come as a surprise only to the
experts, including Condoleezza Rice). Unless Israel controls both sides of
its borders, it can have no security against invaders bent on raw murder.
Can anything positive emerge from the current carnage? Perhaps. Since
Hezbollah has over the years killed hundreds of Americans (most notably
the Marines in Lebanon) without ever paying a price, its destruction by
Israel would constitute a major American victory; the same may be said of
Hamas, whose agents of mass murder are already operating in America.
Perhaps the incessant nattering about "the occupation" will finally give
way to a recognition that the real "root cause" of Middle Eastern wars is
a genocidal Islamicist culture, which must be uprooted by a process
roughly akin to the denazification of Germany after World War II.
Perhaps the Israeli politicians who were so proud of their flight from
Lebanon and Gaza will conjure the ghost of Winston Churchill rebuking
arch-appeaser Neville Chamberlain: "You were given the choice between war
and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war."
Perhaps -- but maybe this is too much to hope -- even our Middle East
experts in this country (who bear a large portion of responsibility for
our mental unpreparedness for 9/11) will be subject to liability laws for
scholarly malpractice of the sort that have long been in place for medical
malpractice.
Edward Alexander is emeritus professor of English at the University of
Washington and co-author (with Paul Bogdanor) of "The Jewish Divide Over
Israel: Accusers and Defenders" (Transaction Publishers).
4. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-boot19jul19%2C0%2C3628616.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
Max Boot: Let Israel Take Off the Gloves
The true sources of terrorism need to be confronted; Syria would be a good
start.
July 19, 2006
5. http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il.
Why Ground Offensive?! Yoram Ettinger, Ynet, July 18, 2006
6. A new grad from the University of DUH?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/740429.html
7. http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/23873/the-lebanese-really-blame-hezbollah.thtml
The Lebanese really blame Hezbollah
Michael Young
8. Israel's 1982 Invasion:
http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=107945
9. The Enemy is Iran:
http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=6398
10. The David Duke Left:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23466
Deck Beirut with bombs, by Golly
NasraLlaLa La La La Lala La
'Tis the napalm makes us jolly
FadlaLlaLa La La La Lala La
]2. As many of you know, I wrote a biography about a Bedouin scout in Israel. He called us yesterday to check that we are all ok. Seems a katyusha landed in his own back yard - no one hurt and no damage.
3. http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18908/Why_The_Left_Hates_Israel.html
Why The Left Hates Israel
By: Vasko Kohlmayer
Few facets of today.s politics are more obvious or more startling than the Left.s hatred of Israel. Be it the United Nations, elite universities or The New York Times, the Left unashamedly uses its institutions as forums from which to conduct its relentless campaign of vilification.
What makes the Left.s behavior especially puzzling is that it runs counter to one of its supposedly most cherished principles . concern for oppressed minorities. Its opprobrium of the country sheltering a group that has been persecuted longer, more unjustly and more cruelly than any other thus presents a seemingly irreconcilable contradiction.
To see what.s behind it, we need to begin with the Left.s overall disposition, which is one of entrenched anti-westernism. Making no secret of its contempt for the West.s traditions, values and achievements, the Left is as much offended by the West.s Judeo-Christian religion as it is by its moral code. The Left deems the West.s cultural triumphs no more unique than those of other societies and sees its past as little more than a story of oppression, exploitation and ignominy. And the Left despises free market capitalism . our socio-economic foundation . which it claims to be exploitative, unfair or worse.
The Left does not confine itself to criticism, but also expresses itself in practical action. These efforts take place on two fronts. Internally, it seeks to undermine the West by corroding its values and institutions. Externally, it renders assistance to its enemies which is why, for instance, many on the Left sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Belligerent and armed, the Soviets vowed to consign the West to the abyss of history and large numbers of leftists relished the prospect. Needless to say, the collapse of the Soviet Empire came as a bitter setback.
Then, on 9/11, radical Islamists burst on the scene. Their attacks and subsequent statements left no doubt that their goal was the West.s destruction. Perceiving a unique opportunity, the Left sprang into action and since then has done all it can to undermine our ability to prosecute the war. Impugning the president, attacking our military, calling for the closure of detention centers and outing secret programs are all part and parcel of this effort.
Intent on using Islam as a battering ram against the West, the Left has pressed on with hopeful zeal, for the terrorist attacks in America and Europe revealed just how vulnerable we are. Even more significantly, most Western nations are quite obviously unwilling to defend themselves and they castigate the one country willing to confront the threat head on. The West has shown itself weak and vacillating, and there is indeed much reason for optimism as far as the Left is concerned. The Left.s hopes, however, are being seriously threatened from an unexpected quarter: Israel.
The Islamic movement derives much of its impetus from the belief in the coming of a worldwide caliphate which, most Muslims believe, is ultimately destined to rule this earth. One of the great obstacles on the road to this vision is Western civilization, which will have to be overcome if Islam is ever to reign supreme.
Given the West.s economic and military superiority, conquering it is a task whose magnitude could easily discourage even the most ardent believers. In order to shore up the fighting spirit of their followers and unleash their destructive passions, Islamic ideologues employ a two-pronged strategy. They portray the West not only as a beehive of godless infidels, but also as a decadent, corrupt, depraved and dysfunctional culture. This ensures that many are driven to jihad as much by their outraged moral sensibilities as by a desire to bring about Allah.s kingdom and securing their place in paradise should they die on the way.
But this strategy of vilification has one profound weakness. It is based on lies.
Nothing makes this more obvious than the State of Israel, a flourishing Western-type democracy in the heart of the Middle East. Decent, just and fair, the country.s mode of existence is completely at variance with Islam.s claims about the West.s inherent wickedness. Furthermore, Israel.s success and prosperity accentuate the backwardness, poverty and stagnation of the Islamic regimes themselves.
Israel thus puts the lie in devastating fashion to Islam.s claims about the West while throwing into sharp relief the depth of its own failures. Situated right in their own backyard, the Jewish state continually threatens to expose Islamic ideologues for the demagogues they are in the eyes of the very populations they seek to manipulate.
This in turn poses a grave danger to radical Islam itself, because once it is shown for a fraud in its own hotbed of the Middle East . the place from which it draws much of its impetus and energy . it may as well abandon its aspiration of ever becoming a force that can seriously challenge the West.
This possibility alarms the Left deeply. Having enlisted Islam as its closest ally in the anti-Western crusade, the Left naturally wants it to remain as strong and robust as possible. By undercutting the viability of radical Islam, Israel thus endangers the Left at the point of its ultimate hope and desire . the West.s destruction. Only when we grasp this will we understand the true reasons for the Left.s bitter dislike of the Jewish state. The Left.s virulent attacks on the country that is home to a long-persecuted minority will then no longer seem so bewildering.
One of the Left.s most salient characteristics is that its concern for the causes it outwardly espouses extends only insofar as those causes further leftist objectives, which, in the case of minorities, is the weakening of Western culture through balkanization. The moment a minority happens to benefit the Western cause . as Israel does in this clash of civilizations . the Left not only abandons it, but turns against it with a vengeance.
There can be little doubt that the elimination of Israel is what the Left is ultimately after. Statements by many of its spokesmen make this amply clear. Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and their ilk speak of Israel as a land whose malignant influence can only be checked by severe measures. And the liberal elites throughout the West back that kind of rhetoric with action. In a gesture so twisted as to defy belief, it awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to a terrorist who had devoted his life to Israel.s obliteration.
The United Nations, the Mecca of the international Left, passes resolution after resolution condemning Israel while turning a blind eye to the barbarism of its enemies. Attempting to force terms that would make its survival untenable, the UN tries to box Israel into a position from which it would be unable to defend itself. At the same time, the Left.s media organs put out editorial after editorial castigating Israel.
Few examples better reveal the Left.s duplicity than its stance on Israel, a country whose only offense is that it is a successful practitioner of the Western tradition. A Western outpost in the very heart our enemy.s base, the Jewish state is a crucial battleground in this war of civilizations. And the Left, fully cognizant of its seminal importance, is doing all it can to tear it down.
As the West.s strategic ally, Israel must not be abandoned if we are to emerge victorious from the life-and-death conflict in which we are currently engaged. But there is another, equally important, reason why Israel must survive. An enlightened and decent country, its demise would be a tragic setback not only for Jews but for all who fight on the side of humanity and enlightenment against terror, fanaticism and darkness.
Vasko Kohlmayer defected from Communist Czechoslovakia at the age of 19. He lives in London and can be contacted at vasko_kohlmayer@msn.com.
4. Hizbollah is Here:
http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin071906.php3
5. Richard Cohen's parents made a very serious mistake. Why did they not pull out?
http://netwmd.com/blog/2006/07/19/737#more-737
6. Only at Counterpunch. The Cockburn-Cockroach Jonathan Cook, an anti-Semite that Israel for some reason has not arrested nor deported, sits in Nazareth and spews out neo-nazi propaganda. In his latest, http://counterpunch.com/Cook07192006.html, he takes Israel for task in using Arab towns in the Galilee as human shields. I guess he means rather than treating them in a more humane manner and expelling their inhabitants altogether?
7. http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23448
Leftists: Born to Run
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com July 20, 2006
I knew the events in the Middle East were big when the New York Times devoted nearly as much space to them as it did to a New York court ruling last week rejecting gay marriage.
Some have argued that Israel's response is disproportionate, which is actually correct: It wasn't nearly strong enough. I know this because there are parts of South Lebanon still standing.
Most Americans have been glued to their TV sets, transfixed by Israel's show of power, wondering, "Gee, why can't we do that?"
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says that "what's going on in the Middle East today" wouldn't be happening if the Democrats were in power. Yes, if the Democrats were running things, our cities would be ash heaps and the state of Israel would have been wiped off the map by now.
But according to Dean, the Democrats would have the "moral authority that Bill Clinton had" . no wait! keep reading . "when he brought together the Israelis and Palestinians." Clinton really brokered a Peace in Our Time with that deal . "our time" being a reference to that five-minute span during which he announced it. Yasser Arafat immediately backed out on all his promises and launched the second intifada.
The fact that Israel is able to launch an attack on Hezbollah today without instantly inciting a multination conflagration in the Middle East is proof of what Bush has accomplished. He has begun to create a moderate block of Arab leaders who are apparently not interested in becoming the next Saddam Hussein.
There's been no stock market crash, showing that the markets have confidence that Israel will deal appropriately with the problem and that it won't expand into World War III.
But liberals can never abandon the idea that we must soothe savage beasts with appeasement . whether they're dealing with murderers like Willie Horton or Islamic terrorists. Then the beast eats you.
There are only two choices with savages: fight or run. Democrats always want to run, but they dress it up in meaningless catchphrases like "diplomacy," "detente," "engagement," "multilateral engagement," "multilateral diplomacy," "containment" and "going to the UN."
I guess they figure, "Hey, appeasement worked pretty well with ... uh ... wait, I know this one ... ummm ... tip of my tongue...."
Democrats like to talk tough, but you can never trap them into fighting. There is always an obscure objection to be raised in this particular instance . but in some future war they would be intrepid! One simply can't imagine what that war would be.
Democrats have never found a fight they couldn't run from.
On "Meet the Press" last month, Sen. Joe Biden was asked whether he would support military action against Iran if the Iranians were to go "full-speed-ahead with their program to build a nuclear bomb."
No, of course not. There is, Biden said, "no imminent threat at this point."
According to the Democrats, we can't attack Iran until we have signed affidavits establishing that it has nuclear weapons, but we also can't attack North Korea because it may already have nuclear weapons. The pattern that seems to be emerging is: "Don't ever attack anyone, ever, for any reason. Ever."
The Democrats are in a snit about North Korea having nukes, with Howard Dean saying Democrats are tougher on defense than the Republicans because since Bush has been president, North Korea has "quadrupled their nuclear weapons stash."
It wasn't that difficult. Clinton gave the North Koreans $4 billion to construct nuclear reactors in return for the savages promising not to use the reactors to build bombs. But oddly, despite this masterful triumph of "diplomacy," the savages did not respond with good behavior. Instead, they immediately set to work feverishly building nuclear weapons.
But that's another threat the Democrats do not think is yet ripe for action.
On "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Sen. Biden lightly dismissed the North Koreans, saying their "government's like an eighth-grader with a small bomb looking for attention" and that we "don't even have the intelligence community saying they're certain they have a nuclear weapon."
Is that the test? We need to have absolute certainty that the North Koreans have a nuclear weapon capable of hitting California with Kim Jong-Il making a solemn promise to bomb the U.S. (and really giving us his word this time, no funny business) before we . we what? If they have a nuclear weapon, what do we do then? Is a worldwide thermonuclear war the one war Democrats would finally be willing to fight?
Democrats won't acknowledge the existence of "an imminent threat" anyplace in the world until a nuclear missile is 12 minutes from New York. And then we'll never have the satisfaction of saying "I told you so," because we'll all be dead.
8. http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23446
The End of Israel's "Peace Through Weakness"
By Michael Reagan
FrontPageMagazine.com July 20, 2006
(let us hope he is correct)
9. Presbs back off, for now:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23439
10. Jihad at U-Wisconsin
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23450
11. Ayn Rand Institute Press Release
http://www.aynrand.org/
Israel Should Wage a Real War
July 19, 2006
Irvine, CA--What will it take for Israel to wage a real war? How many more Israelis will have to be murdered, kidnapped, or maimed?
Israel says the killing and kidnapping of Israelis by Islamic terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas are acts of war. But is Israel prepared to wage a real war in self-defense?
Hezbollah and Hamas have been launching attacks against Israelis for decades--yet Israel has not used its military capability to inflict massive destruction on these groups and obliterate the terrorist states that harbor and sponsor them.
"It is long past time for Israel to wage a real war against these terrorist groups and states," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
"And it is long past time for the United States to join Israel in waging this war."
### ### ###
Dr. Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a recognized Middle-East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle-East issues. Dr. Brook has served in the Israeli Army Intelligence and has discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war on Islamic totalitarianism on hundreds of radio and TV programs, including FOX News (The O'Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera), CNN's Talkback Live, CNBC's Closing Bell and On the Money, and a C-SPAN panel of experts on terrorism.
To book Dr. Brook for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
949-222-6550 ext. 213 (office)
949-838-5137 (cell)
media@aynrand.org
Copyright 2006 Ayn Rand Institute. All rights reserved.
12. From David Brotsky
Subject: "I was BANNED from a "pro-Israel" rally!
I am very disappointed in my fellow Jewish people this evening, as I printed out hundreds of fliers (on my own time and dime) and I went to a "Rally for Israel" here in Dallas today. I expressed my intentions prior to the "rally" to some of its organizers beforehand, and no one told me I had to get some sort of approval to hand out a sheet of paper with words on it.
After I shared the flier with some of the organizers and while waiting for "rally" to end, many of them approached me to tell me I could not hand out the flier. I said that I was waiting for it to end so I could hand it out as people were leaving. They told me I could not be on the premises distributing it because it was not "pre-approved," and if I gave them a hard time, they'd get the police involved. So I stood outside the property (just outside the main parking lot) and waited for the few people trickling down into that direction to leave and handed them the following words:
B'H
LEBANON RETREAT = TERROR IN THE NORTH
GAZA RETREAT = TERROR IN THE SOUTH
WEST BANK RETREAT = TERROR IN THE MIDDLE
i.e. JERUSALAM AND TEL AVIV
We support Olmert.s military self-defense.
We can no longer tolerate giving .land for terror..
Olmert is planning to retreat from the West Bank.
The West Bank to the north of Jerusalem is elevated ground in the heart of the country.
It will make the terror from the north and south seem minimal.
Members of large Jewish organizations,
tell your leaders to tell Olmert...
"The Convergence/Realignment Plan" = National Suicide"
13. Aussie for Terror:
http://www.icjs-online.org/index.php?eid=1515&ICJS=1883&article=953
1.
The View from Haifa September 10th Syndrome
By: Steven Plaut
"All you do all day is threaten that there will be Katyusha rockets landing in Ashkelon. Would you mind telling me why there are no rockets fired from Aqaba to Eilat?"
. Foreign Minister and Labor MK Shimon Peres, Knesset minutes, September 9, 1993
I could still hear Peres's words echoing when Katyusha rockets began exploding in Haifa a few days ago, some of them just several blocks from my home. Filled with thousands of lead pellets to maximize the carnage, one of them ended the lives of nine people in a Haifa train depot.
I contemplated those words while Patriot missile batteries were being erected on my campus at the University of Haifa. The college was shut down for the duration of the attacks, but I proposed to the powers-that-be that all leftist professors be forcibly kept on campus to serve as human shields.
The e-mails and phone calls come in nonstop. Why are you online and not down in the bomb shelter, you meshugena? asks a friend from California. I reply that there are too many spiderwebs down there.
The Katyushas landing in Haifa were, for all intents and purposes, dropped here by Ehud Barak.
In the summer of 2000, in what amounted to a cowardly unilateral retreat, then-Prime Minister Barak ordered the IDF to abandon its positions in southern Lebanon. Hizbullah terrorists had been sniping at Israeli troops inside Lebanon and the toll was slowly mounting. With a bit of initiative Israel could have put a stop to that, but instead Barak opted for placing all of northern Israel within the rocket sites of the terrorists.
Ever since that withdrawal, the Israeli Left had been patting itself on its collective back, insisting that the unilateral retreat had not only worked but could serve as a role model for Gaza and the West Bank.
The abandonment of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip was largely based on that notion, as is Prime Minister Olmert's current plan for "contraction" in the West Bank. After all, the retreat from Lebanon had "worked" in the sense that the Lebanese border seemed to be "relatively" tranquil, with a death toll below what it had been when the Israeli army was still on the ground in Lebanon.
Six years have passed since the retreat from southern Lebanon. The attitude of the Israeli chattering classes toward that "success" is illustrative of what I call the September 10th Syndrome. On September 10, 2001, there were many public figures in the U.S. convinced that there was no chance terrorists could or would strike America. Their conclusion, to quote Mark Twain, was just a little premature.
Israel has suffered from a mass infestation of September 10th Syndrome ever since the capitulation to Hizbullah in 2000. But in recent days it's become clear that there can be something even worse than such an affliction . namely, suffering from September 10th Syndrome on September 12, i.e., not even realizing how wrong one had been even after events should have removed all doubt.
True, the Lebanese border remained "relatively" quiet after the Barak withdrawal, but not for the reasons marketed by the Israeli political establishment. All that had happened was that Syria was cowed into keeping the Lebanese border quiet for a while after 2001 due to its fears of being targetedby an enraged America on the warpath against Middle East terrorism.
The supposed success of the Lebanese capitulation was also the official theology behind Israel's security fence in the West Bank. The security fence along the Lebanese border was thought to have demonstrated that all Israel now needed to do with Gaza and the West bank was get itself out and build similar fences, replete with all manner of electronic gizmos, just as it had done along the Lebanese border. After all, the politicians kept chanting, once there were no Israeli troops in "Arab lands," the Arab side would have no reason to engage in terror and military aggression against Israel.
Of course, the Barak withdrawal never really solved anything. The Lebanese border was not calm. Thousands of state-of-the-art rockets were sitting there, ready to strike. Shelling and cross-border incursions by Hizbullah were regular occurrences, and Hizbullah agents were freely wandering the Gaza Strip, helping Hamas build its bombs. In short, the Lebanese border was as secure and as calm as the World Trade Center towers were on September 10, 2001.
******
There is no diplomatic way of putting this. The kidnapping of Israeli soldiers in Gaza and along the Lebanese border is the direct result of Israel's rewarding and appeasing terrorism over the past few decades. Long gone are the days when Israelis boasted that their government never negotiated with terrorists.
The 1976 Entebbe rescue was the greatest and, alas, the last serious use by Israel of force to deal with the kidnapping of Israelis by Arab terrorists. Since then, Israel has more often than not dealt with hostage situations by capitulating and conceding.
Such situations, of course, are never easy, both from a strategic and a moral perspective. There is a complex trade-off between the desire to free hostages at once and the need to deter and punish hostage grabbers. The understandable human . and humane . instinct to seek the immediate freeing of hostages must be weighed against actions that will put other lives in jeopardy. Decision makers face the dilemma that saving a single life today may well produce scores of deaths tomorrow.
. In 1985, the Likud-led government of Yitzhak Shamir carried out a prisoner exchange with the "Jibril" terrorists. Israel agreed to release more than a thousand Arabs incarcerated for terrorist activities in exchange for three Israeli soldiers. Just three days after the trade, one of those released Arabs was brought into an Israeli hospital. He had accidentally blown himself up while preparing a bomb intended for Israeli shoppers. Others among the released terrorists would, in the months and years to come, participate in a number of attacks and murders.
. On October 16, 1986, while on a mission over southern Lebanon, Israeli air force navigator Lieutenant Colonel Ron Arad and his pilot were forced by a technical problem to parachute out of their plane. The pilot was rescued by an Israeli chopper, but Arad fell captive to terrorists belonging to the Lebanese Shi'ite Amal militia. All trace of Arad was lost. Since 1986, Israel has engaged in feeble and pointless attempts at "quiet diplomacy" in order to win the release of Arad or at least learn of his fate. The efforts have produced nothing.
. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin launched his "peace plan" of legitimizing and recognizing the PLO and at the same time ordered the expulsion of 400 Hamas terrorists from the West Bank and Gaza to Lebanon. The expulsion had near-universal support in Israel. Shortly thereafter, however, Israel permitted almost all the expelled terrorists return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where they resumed their leadership roles in terror organizations. It was a yet another goodwill gesture for which Israel got nothing in exchange. Not even information on Ron Arad.
. In 1994, in the middle of Rabin's "peace initiative," Palestinian terrorists kidnapped Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman. The kidnappers held him hostage in the West Bank village of Bir Naballah, which had long been a hotbed of terror.
On October 7, 1994, villagers violently attacked Israeli soldiers who were trying to storm the Bir Naballah home in which Wachsman was being held. The terrorists had enough time to murder Wachsman before his would-be rescuers got into the house. Israel did not bulldoze the village in retaliation, just as it has not bulldozed other West Bank villages in which soldiers and civilians have been murdered.
These days, Israeli leftists are busy assisting the residents of Bir Naballah in sabotaging the security wall Israel is constructing, because it offends the sensitivities of the Arab villagers.
. In July 2003 the Israeli cabinet decided in a 14-9 vote to buy Ariel Sharon a Kodak moment in Washington by releasing more than 500 Palestinian prisoners, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah terrorists, again as a "goodwill gesture." Few of the released terrorists took up quilting.
. In January 2004, Israel agreed to an exchange with Hizbullah. More than 400 Arab prisoners, many accused of killing civilians, were released in return for a single Israeli civilian hostage and the bodies of the three soldiers who had been murdered in cold blood by Hizbullah.
The prisoner exchange was widely opposed in Israel, and passed the Israeli cabinet by a single vote. Afterward, Israel never avenged the three soldiers murdered by Hizbullah. A suicide bombing that killed 10 Israelis took place the very day of the prisoners' release, but Israel went ahead with it anyway.
Two of those set free had been high-ranking Lebanese terrorists, directly involved in the kidnapping, torture, and reported "sale" of Ron Arad to Iran. Israel did not even demand information on the whereabouts of Arad in exchange, just an empty promise of some information in the future, which, needless to say, has never materialized.
At the time, the Arab media crowed in smug satisfaction at Israel's humiliation in the prisoner release. Al-Ahram called it a "new notch in Hizbullah's belt!" In Israel it was seen as a debacle. Even Yoel Marcus at Israel's far-left daily Haaretz called it a "License to Kidnap."
Yuval Arad, Ron Arad's daughter, said she felt Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had abandoned her father. In a letter to Sharon, she wrote: "I can't understand how you can sleep at night ... you're about to release the man who tortured him [her father]."
******
In the early stages of the Allied invasion of Iraq, a number of Western hostages were grabbed by terrorist groups. Some were murdered by beheading. The U.S. and Britain did not release any captured terrorists in exchange for any hostages, nor did they make any other concessions to the terrorists. On the contrary, in cases where hostages were not released unharmed, allied troops went after the kidnappers with a special vengeance and ferocity. The result was an end to the wave of kidnappings.
The Israeli strategy of appeasing terrorists by releasing prisoners has caused more kidnappings and more terrorism. The lessons of recent years are as simple as they are absent from Israeli policy thinking. Releasing prisoners to appease terrorists causes more kidnapping. Refusing to capitulate to terrorist demands stops the kidnapping. Cutting and running when rockets fall causes them to fall in much larger numbers.
Yes, Jewish tradition has always allowed, indeed mandated, payment for the redemption of Jewish captives. Buried in the Aramaic in every marriage contract is a clause that obligates husbands (male readers, be warned!) to ransom their wives should they be taken captive.
But there were always clear limits on what could be paid for ransom . for two reasons. The first was to "avoid placing onerous economic burdens on the community." But the second was more for strategic considerations, and in some ways is the more important. Paying out large ransoms creates incentive for further kinappings and inspires escalated ransom demands. The Talmudic sages understood what Israel's politicians do not.
During the Middle Ages, Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg, one of the last Tosophists, was the leader of German Jewry. He prohibited women from wearing tefillin but at the same time was a strong defender of wives against abusive husbands. Some of his elegies are still part of the prayer book. (Interestingly, there are reports that he claimed to be a direct descendent of the evil emperor Nero.)
Convinced that Jews had no future in Ashkenaz (Germany), Rabbi Meir was leading a contingent of families to the Land of Israel when he was abducted by the authorities in Basel and held for ransom. He prohibited the Jewish community from paying for his release, fearing it would encourage more kidnappings of Jews. He died in a prison near Colmar in 1291, and some years later his body was ransomed and then buried in Worms. Rabbi Meir chose death over putting the burden of frequent abductions on the entire Jewish population.
At the time of the capitulation by the Israeli government to Hizbullah in the 2004 mass release of terrorists, Israeli politicians insisted that they had no choice and were just following the dictates of Jewish ethics. While it is nice to hear Israeli politicians (uncharacteristically) acknowledge the importance of Jewish ethics, they had no idea what those ethics actually say about hostage redemption (or anything else). They were simply looking for a pseudo-ethical argument to use as a fig leaf for their appeasement of terrorists.
Speaking of Jewish ethics, Judaism unambiguously supports the death penalty for murderers, whereas Israeli politicians are pusillanimously opposed to it. Let us take note of the fact that no terrorist has ever murdered anyone else after being executed.
Had convicted terrorists and murderers been executed in Israel all along, there would be few terrorist prisoners frolicking in Israeli jails, serving as bait and incentive for Palestinian militias and Hizbullah to kidnap Jews.
Had Hizbullah villages been turned into parking lots years ago, there would be no Katyushas falling on northern Israel.
http://www.jewishpress.com/UploadedImages/stdImage/450072106_frntpg_colorcomp.jpg
2. Proportionate and Disproportionate:
http://americanthinker.com/articles_print.php?article_id=5680
3. Bomb Damascus, not Beirut:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjI0YjAzMTVmZWQ5NWMzNDZiNTNiN2U3YjMyNzBmZWM=
4. Stop playing and make a ground invasion:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDI3MTMwZjg0ZjAxODJhMzkxYzI0ZGU4YzQ3ZDRlNmU=
WHY ISRAEL SHOULD BOMB SYRIA.
by Michael B. Oren
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 07.17.06
N <http://www.tnr.com/images/dropcaps/N.gif> early 40 years ago, Israel and the Arab world fought a war that altered the course of Middle Eastern history. Now, as the region teeters on the brink of a new and potentially more violent cataclysm, it is important to revisit the lessons of the Six Day War, a conflict that few Middle Eastern countries wanted and none foresaw.
By 1967, ten years after the Sinai Campaign, the Arab-Israeli dispute had settled into an uneasy status quo. The radical Egyptian regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser still proclaimed its commitment to liberating Palestine and throwing the Jews into the sea, as did its conservative rivals in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, but none of these states made any attempt to renew hostilities. On the contrary, Egypt remained quiescent behind the U.N. peacekeeping forces deployed in Sinai, Gaza, and the Straits of Tiran since 1957. Jordan maintained secret contacts with the Israelis. Israel, for its part, had long learned to ignore bellicose Arab rhetoric and to seek backdoor channels to even the most vituperative Arab rulers. As late as April 1967, officials at Israel's foreign ministry were speculating whether Nasser might be a viable partner for a peace process.
But one Arab state did not want peace. Syria, then as now under the rule of the belligerent Baath Party, wanted war. Having tried and failed in 1964 to divert the Jordan River before it crossed the Israeli border--IDF jets and artillery blasted the dams--the Syrians began supporting a little-known Palestinian guerrilla group called Al Fatah under the leadership of Yasir Arafat. Using Lebanon as its principal base, Al Fatah commenced operations against Israel in 1965 and rapidly escalated its attacks. Finally, at the end of 1966, Israeli officials felt compelled to retaliate. But, fearing the repercussions of attacking Soviet-backed Syria, they decided to strike at an Al Fatah stronghold in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank.
The raid unfortunately led to a firefight between IDF and Jordanian troops, and to Jordanian claims that Nasser had not done enough to protect the West Bank Palestinians. Desperate to restore his reputation, Nasser exploited a spurious Soviet report of Israeli war plans to evict U.N. peacekeepers. He closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, concentrated 100,000 of his troops along the Israeli border, and forged anti-Israeli pacts with Syria and Jordan. The Arab world rejoiced at the prospect of annihilating Israel, and even the Soviets, eager to find some means of distracting American attention from Vietnam, were pleased. Israeli leaders had no choice but to determine when and where to strike preemptively.
And so, suddenly and unexpectedly, a regional war erupted that the principal combatants--Israel, Egypt, and Jordan--neither desired nor anticipated. The lesson: Local conflicts in the Middle East can quickly spin out of control and spiral into a regional conflagration.
The lesson is especially pertinent to the current crisis. Then, as now, the Syrians have goaded a terrorist organization, Hezbollah, to launch raids against Israel from Lebanon. Then, as now, the rapid rise of terrorist attacks has forced Israel to mount reprisals. If the Soviets in 1967 wanted to divert America's attention from Vietnam, the Iranians--Syria's current sponsors--want to divert American attention from their nuclear-arms program. And once again Israel must decide when to strike back and against whom.
Back in 1966, Israel recoiled from attacking Syria and instead raided Jordan, inadvertently setting off a concatenation of events culminating in war. Israel is once again refraining from an entanglement with Hezbollah's Syrian sponsors, perhaps because it fears a clash with Iran. And just as Israel's failure to punish the patron of terror in 1967 ultimately triggered a far greater crisis, so too today, by hesitating to retaliate against Syria, Israel risks turning what began as a border skirmish into a potentially more devastating confrontation. Israel may hammer Lebanon into submission and it may deal Hezbollah a crushing blow, but as long as Syria remains hors de combat there is no way that Israel can effect a permanent change in Lebanon's political labyrinth and ensure an enduring ceasefire in the north. On the contrary, convinced that Israel is unwilling to confront them, the Syrians may continue to escalate tensions, pressing them toward the crisis point. The result could be an all-out war with Syria as well as Iran and severe political upheaval in Jordan, Egypt, and the Gulf.
The answer lies in delivering an unequivocal blow to Syrian ground forces deployed near the Lebanese border. By eliminating 500 Syrian tanks--tanks that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad needs to preserve his regime--Israel could signal its refusal to return to the status quo in Lebanon. Supporting Hezbollah carries a prohibitive price, the action would say. Of course, Syria could respond with missile attacks against Israeli cities, but given the dilapidated state of Syria's army, the chances are greater that Assad will simply internalize the message. Presented with a choice between saving Hezbollah and staying alive, Syria's dictator will probably choose the latter. And the message of Israel's determination will also be received in Tehran.
Any course of military action carries risks, especially in the unpredictable Middle East. But if the past is any guide, and if the Six Day War presents a paradigm of an unwanted war that might have been averted with an early, well-placed strike at Syria, then Israel's current strategy in Lebanon deserves to be rethought. If Syria escapes unscathed and Iran undeterred, Israel will remain insecure.
Michael B. Oren <http://www.tnr.com/showBio.mhtml?pid=227&sa=1> is a senior fellow at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem and the author most recently of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press).
2. From National Review:
Hezbollah's Casualties, The Cynical View [Jonah Goldberg]
I should have mentioned this in the original post. But several readers have raised the other possibility that some of the "civilians" are in fact members of Hezbollah and the Western press takes casualty reports at face value. Maybe. It's not like we haven't see that before. Still, most of these casualties must in fact be civilians . the refugee caravan for example . and Israel has not denied as much.
Posted at 9:42 AM
3. Eradication Now:
http://www.meforum.org/article/977
4. We are all Israelis now:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjM1OGMxZWU0YzQ4MTQwZGU5NGRkMzQzM2MzNzdiNDc=
Even Hillary:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739473.html
5. Police detain Al-Jazeera news team in Haifa
Etgar Lefkovits Jul. 16, 2006
The Israel Police on Sunday detained an Al-Jazeera news team after it
broadcast live footage which disclosed the area of Sunday's deadly
Katyusha
attack in Haifa, in violation of military censorship rules, police and
security officials said.
Eight people were killed and dozens were wounded in the mid-morning
attack, the most lethal Hizbullah rocket attack since Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon six years ago.
The station's Israel correspondent, Elias Karram, was among those
detained by police.
6. While the Israelis for a Second Holocaust are holding anti-Israel rallies to oppose Israeli aggression and imperialism against Lebanon, some of the academic moonbaterie are also active.
Rachel Giora is a fanatic anti-Israel pro-terrorist from Tel Aviv University in linguistics, having taken over as TAU's leading linguistics cheerleader for terror now that Talya Reinhart has been forced into requirement.
Her web site is at http://www.tau.ac.il/~giorar/index.htm
She is distributing a petition denouncing Israel for defending itself in Lebanon and demanding that the US take action against Israel, not against the Hezbollah.
Here is what she wrote:
From: Rachel Giora
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 8:16 PM
Subject: Fw: petition
Please sign & forward this petition:
" Israel attacks Lebanon"
"Believing that the current actions by the State of Israel in
invading/attacking the State of Lebanon is both an unlawful and
unwarranted attack upon innocent civilians by an aggressor nation, we call
upon the United States of America and the United Nations to condemn the
State of Israel, and the actions thereof, and to demand the immediate
cessation of all military action by the forces of the State of Israel
within the borders of the state of Lebanon, and to demand the immediate
withdrawal of all personnel of the State of Israel from the State of
Lebanon."
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?50600
If you wish to tell the heads of TAU what you think of this, or to describe to them your intentions regarding future contributions to TAU, contact these people:
Tel Aviv University:
President: http://www.tau.ac.il/president/president-e.html
Rector: http://www.tau.ac.il/president/president-e.html
Officers: http://www.tau.ac.il/officers-eng.html
Friends and Alumni Associations: http://www.tau.ac.il/friends-eng.html
Public Affairs: http://www.tau.ac.il/affairs-eng.html
7. Oh what sad news for the Israeli Left:
Israelis overwhelmingly support IDF's Lebanon op.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 18, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nearly nine out of 10 Israelis say the IDF's week-old operation against Hizbullah is justified and nearly 60 percent say the operations should continue until the movement is destroyed, according to an opinion poll published Tuesday.
The Dahaf poll, published in Yediot Ahronot, found that 81 percent of Israelis want the military campaign to continue. Another 78 percent said they were satisfied with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's functioning.
The poll of 513 Israelis taken Monday was the first since the start of Operation Changing Direction on Wednesday. The poll had an error margin of 4.2 percentage points.
(Remember that one in 6 Israelis is an Arab)
More bad news for the moonbats. Take a look at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739042.html
and read the talkbacks there!
8. Please forgive me.
I have been under katyusha attack all day so forgive me for this poor taste. But the news reports say that Israeli ground troops at long last entered Lebanon but were very quickly ordered to withdraw.
Please be advised that there are significant penalties for early withdrawal. (Frankly, I would term the 2000 Barak withdrawal from Lebanon as "premature ejaculation")
9. Soviet Joke Telling:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7412
10. Think this is relevant?
In late April, Arab terrorists affiliated with the Fatah terrorist group, headed by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, issued a communique in which they call for kidnapping Israelis, as well as Jews outside of Israel.
"This is an open call to all our fighters in the homeland to focus on kidnapping Israeli soldiers and civilians inside our occupied land," the Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades declared. "If the enemy does not release our prisoners, then Zionists outside Palestine will be an easy target for our fighters."
11. Or this?
ROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU
No. 2 for Israeli PM's party
in U.S. a convicted criminal
Kadima rep with history of forgery, grand
larceny speaking in synagogues, debates
Posted: July 15, 2006
5:27 p.m. Eastern
By Aaron Sichel
2006 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON . The man who has been serving as the No. 2 representative in America for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party is a convicted criminal facing a possible lengthy prison sentence after pleading guilty to felony grand larceny and has in the past been convicted of forgery, WorldNetDaily has learned.
Marc Mishaan, who was listed as the vice president of Kadima USA, has been representing Olmert's political party at various public events the past few months.
According to criminal conviction documents obtained from the New York state court system and to community leaders and associates of Mishaan speaking to WND, the Kadima representative has a long history of fraud, forgery and financial improprieties. One Jewish leader accused Mishaan of embezzling from his charity fund.
Kadima USA is the American fundraising and public support branch of Olmert's party.
Jewish community leaders said they informed Kadima USA officials of Mishaan's documented criminal past, but they said Mishaan continued to serve in an official capacity even after they delivered their warnings.
12. Nice political cartoons at
http://www.coxandforkum.com/
13. Axis of Appeasement:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23381
14. Bay Area Jews for a Second Holocaust:
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2006/07/17/18288971.php
15. Juan Cole cheers the Hezbollah to punish the Jews for blocking his gig at Yale:
http://juancole.com/
16. The Enemy is Iran:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23402
17. Stalin's ghosts at The Nation
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23408
1. SO how bad is it?
Death statistics and probabilities are always hard to explain to
non-statisticians. It sounds like between 25 and 30 Israelis have been
murdered so far by the katyushas and other missiles that Ehud Barak and
the Israeli Labor Party dropped this week on Israel through their
Hezbollah peace partners whom they installed on Israel's northern border.
But let us keep something in perspective. This is about the same as
the death toll from a SINGLE one of some of the worst suicide bombings of
buses and cafes Israel has known. For a while, Israel was having 3 such
bombings each week.
Another way of putting this is that a week of katyushas has produced
a death toll about the same as a week of Israeli traffic accidents.
Actually, because a quarter of the country is indoors and in shelters,
traffic accidents are probably down this week, offsetting Ehud Barak's
katyusha toll a bit.
True, the katyushas tend to frighten people more and are more
emotionally upsetting, because they can strike you at random inside your
home. But traffic accidents and suicide bombers also kill people at
random as they go about their lives.
SO get a grip everyone. And I say that from Haifa, in the top floor
of my building (the vulnerable floor)!
2. Ground troops
It is a complete delusion to think that Israel can resolve the
Lebanon Hezbollah problem with air strikes. The air strikes, mainly on
empty buildings, cannot stop firing of katyushas or kassams.
Only Israeli ground troops can stop the rockets. So far, the Israeli
government and chattering classes prefer to delude the public with
gee-whiz high-tech displays of air power. It is all show and a kind of
national video game. There will be no choice put to conduct a massive
ground invasion and re-conquer southern Lebanon. The only alternative to
THAT is to make the katyushas a permanent part of life in Israel.
Having said that, there is another way to read the Olmert reluctance
to introduce ground troops so far. I myself do not believe this is the
actual explanation, which I think is cowardice, but I mention it to you
anyway.
For the past 58 years, almost every armed confrontation between Israel
and the savages was ended by international pressure to cease fire, always
much too early for Israel to complete its military program. The Six Day
War may be the only exception and even that was done quickly to beat the
stopper. In every other case, Israel was forced to race the clock to
accomplish as much as it could in artificial haste. So far , there is no
international pressure on Israel to hurry things along regarding Lebanon.
But the moment a ground invasion were to take place in south Lebanon, the
pressures would build at astronomical pace.
So someone less cynical than me might attribute that consideration
to Olmert's delay of the ground operations.
3. The Demise of the Left?
Israel's anti-Israel Jewish Left, led by the tenured traitors, is out
showing its solidarity with the Hezbollah this week at protests in Tel
Aviv (you know, the lattes in Sderot are not very good so why go there?).
But there are signs that the entire country has gone through an
ideological revolution and has earmarked the moonbat Left for special
hatred and denunciation, which probably will not become fully evident
until after the war ends. Why do I say this? Well, the "talkbacks" at
leftist Haaretz are viciously anti-Left (at the other papers they have
ALWAYS been so). Chat lists usually featuring leftist professors
denouncing Israel are being flooded with denunciations of the Left.
And there are other signs.
This past Friday, for the very first time, a mainstream columnist in
Israel denounced the Israeli Left as anti-Semitic. Incredibly, the writer
who wrote this is himself a left-of-center professor. Amnon Rubinstein
was among the founders of Meretz. A professor of law, he had been a
strong supporter of Oslo. But lately he has shifted towards center. He
writes a column this past Friday in Maariv, Israel's second largest daily,
and he explicitly denounced the "Post-Zionist" and anti-Israel professors
in Israeli universities as anti-Semites (his word), turning out
anti-Semitic propaganda, indoctrinating their students in anti-Israel
extremism, and working for anti-Semites all over the world. He notes that
some departments at universities are so filled with anti-Semites that if
all the anti-Semites were to be fired, those departments would be shut
down.
Sure, I have been saying that for years, but it sounds better coming
from a founder of Meretz! (Article not available online or in English)
4. I continue to believe that there are some important advantages in
having the Left leading the battle against the Hezbollah. By that I mean
the Labor-Kadima coalition. If the Likud under Bibi were bombing the
bejeebers out of the savages in Lebanon, the Labor Party would be shutting
down the country in protests against the "war criminals" and "fascists"
from the Likud mistreating the Lebanese in their unnecessary war of
imperialism and colonialism.
5. Israel's Moronic Leaders:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739500.html
6. Haaretz Columnists for a Hezbollah Victory:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739501.html
7. The Israel Enigma:
http://jewishworldreview.com/0706/hanson070606.php3
8. A University of Haifa Leftist prof defends Israel's battle against
terror:
July 18, 2006
Hezbollah and Pericles
By FANIA OZ-SALZBERGER
July 18, 2006; Page A14
War does not preclude clear thinking. When Israel withdrew from southern
Lebanon six years ago, to the last inch, and from Gaza one year ago, to
the last inch, scenarios of over-the-border hostilities were high on the
public agenda. Thus, even as smoke rises over northern Israel, Lebanon and
Gaza, some clearheaded points are being made on the Israeli side of the
border. Here is a brief selection.
First and most crucial, a majority of Israelis consider this sad
unleashing of Israeli firepower in Gaza and Lebanon to be, up to now, a
just war. It has both a casus belli and a convincing rationale.
Hostilities were initiated by militias strongly associated with the
elected governments in both regions, targeting IDF personnel strictly on
the Israeli side of the border. Since many media consumers have short
memories, a reminder is in order: Over the last five months, some 800
Kassam rockets were fired at towns and villages in southwestern Israel.
The town of Sderot alone was hit several hundred times. Israel occupied
not an inch of Gaza at that time.
Israel certainly responded, as any sovereign state would; and it did so
not by reinvading Gaza, but with air strikes against militants and
launchers. Palestinian civilians were hurt; Europeans vocally reproached
us; the rockets kept coming. Then came the recent assault on soldiers
stationed within Israel, killing three and kidnapping one. Hezbollah of
Lebanon, wholly unprovoked, simply liked the idea and sent a force into
northern Israel and two follow-up ambushes, killing a total of eight
soldiers and kidnapping two. Both assaults breached a fully legitimate
international border, in the aftermath of a full Israeli withdrawal --
just in case some media consumers have forgotten. Possible lesson: A sense
of right still counts for something amidst all the smoke.
Which leads to a second clearheaded point. Why is Israel's response not
"proportional," and why don't we rush to negotiate with the kidnappers, as
so many peace-lovers in the Western world would like us to do? Let me be
blunt: A "proportional" response would please many Europeans no end, but
would scarcely move a hair in the beard of a Hamas or a Hezbollah leader.
They are not set to be gently pushed into moderation, or to hammer out an
exquisite compromise with the Jewish state, but to wipe it out as soon as
they can. If we shoot a little, they will shoot back all the way into
Islamic eternity. If we "negotiate," cave in to blackmail and release
Hamas and Hezbollah militants held in Israeli prisons in return for our
three kidnapped soldiers, they will send them back to bomb schools and
buses and pizza parlors in no time at all.
Negotiation? For sure. It worked with Egypt and Jordan. It would work with
Saudi Arabia. It would work with moderate Palestinians -- as soon as they
recapture their own polity from Hamas and Hezbollah. But it would not work
with the latter, who along with their Iranian allies openly declare that
they want us dead, not merely complacent. Possible lesson: Compromise with
ultra-extremists usually misfires.
And here is a sad, third clearheaded point: Democracy, in the Middle East
as elsewhere, is not just about universal suffrage. The Palestinians
brought Hamas to power, and Hezbollah is a coalition partner in the
Lebanese government. Please reflect on this, dear Western lovers of
democracy: Is majority vote truly the sole gist of it all? Here is a
painful truth: Israel is killing civilians -- inadvertently, though
arguably too freely -- as it targets militants in Gaza and Lebanon. Yet
the hair-raising aspect of it is that many of those civilians voted Hamas,
and some voted Hezbollah, into their own governments. Democratically
elected, these groups care little for the lives of their own citizens,
even less for the Israeli Arabs they have bombed and killed in recent
days, and null for Israeli civilians. Yet their voters keep applauding.
Gazan and Lebanese children are innocent victims of this policy, and many
Israelis -- I must assert this even in the face of disbelief -- truly
grieve for them.
But the adults? Are these men and women hostages of live-in terrorists,
dumb natives managed by shrewd colonialists, or are they perhaps
accountable civil agents who made a very bad choice in one of their first
democratic performances? Possible lesson: Reread Pericles.
Arab democracy is not hopeless, a fourth clearheaded reflection suggests.
The Middle East is divided between those who jeer with any rocket hitting
Haifa, and those -- in Lebanon, Palestine and Saudi Arabia -- who secretly
hope for both Hamas and Hezbollah to vanish into the limbo of lost
lunatics and make way for better and saner Arab regimes. In the aftermath
of the current war, Ehud Olmert's Kadima-Labor coalition government would
promptly talk with a peace-seeking Palestinian government; this is why a
majority of Israelis voted them in to begin with. Possible lesson:
Moderates don't easily lose their nerve these days.
My final point may be news to both friends and foes of Israel: This
society is holding strong. Opinions here are divided, for sure, about the
wisdom and morality of using force, and about the wisdom and effectiveness
of withholding force. The public argument keeps sizzling as the north of
Israel, including my own Jewish-Arab university of Haifa, is under fire.
For some reason, going beyond Israel and deeply linked to Pericles, I take
this to be good news.
Ms. Oz-Salzberger is a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115318772562109435.html
9. Metropolitan News-Enterprise
Leftist Hooligan "Rabbi" at Hillel
http://www.metnews.com/articles/2006/neuw071706.htm
Monday, July 17, 2006
Page 1
Court of Appeal Allows Suit Over Rabbi.s Alleged Attack on Writer
By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer/Appellate Courts
A Jewish writer who claims that a prominent local rabbi attacked and
injured her after they argued about Middle East politics can sue the
organization he works for, the Court of Appeal for this district has
ruled.
Reversing a contrary ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James A.
Bascue, the panel said Wednesday there was sufficient evidence for a jury
to decide whether Chaim Seidler-Feller was acting in the role and scope of
his employment when he allegedly attacked Rachel Neuwirth three years ago.
Neuwirth sued Seidler-Feller along with Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish
Campus Life and the Los Angeles Hillel Council. The rabbi has headed the
UCLA affiliate of Hillel, which serves Jewish students on more than 500
campuses throughout the world, for more than 30 years.
The suit resulted from a brouhaha outside Royce Hall on the Westwood
campus, following an address by Harvard Law School.s Alan Dershowitz, who
was promoting his book .The Case for Israel..
Outside the hall were some Palestinian or pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
The rabbi stopped to talk to one of them about an upcoming event involving
Sari Nusseibeh, a prominent Palestinian involved in an ongoing
non-governmental peace effort.
Controversial Writings
Neuwirth, who has suggested in her writings that peace between Israel and
the Palestinians is an impossibility, that responsibility for the
Palestinians should be placed on the Arab nations, and that President
Bush.s .road map. for Mideast peace is doomed to failure, attended the
speech and overheard the rabbi.s conversation.
She alleges in her complaint that she .calmly. told the rabbi that
Nusseibeh had been identified by Israeli intelligence during the Gulf War
as having phoned Iraqi officials and urged them to .send the Scud missiles
not to the Negev, but to more effective places..
Neuwirth claims that Seidler-Feller then .flew into a rage,. called her .a
liar,. grabbed and twisted her right hand and scratched her thumb and
index finger with his fingernails. Neuwirth said she was shocked and
outraged, causing her to exclaim that Seidler-Feller was a .kapo..the
title given to Jews who collaborated with the Nazis by helping administer
concentration camps.
The rabbi had to be pulled off Neuwirth by .three or four large college
men,. Neuwirth claims.
Neuwirth alleged causes of action for battery and infliction of emotional
distress against the rabbi and claimed that Hillel was vicariously liable
on those claims and directly liable for negligent retention.
Violent Tendencies Alleged
The plaintiff asserted that attending the Dershowitz event, of which
Hillel was a co-sponsor; recruiting attendees for the upcoming event, and
engaging in public discussion on issues of Jewish interest were within the
scope of the rabbi.s duties. She also contended that Hillel should have
been aware of Seidler-Feller.s tendency towards violence.
Bascue sustained Hillel.s demurrer to the claims of vicarious liability,
finding that Seidler-Feller was not, as a matter of law, acting within the
scope of his duties at the Hillel event. He overruled the demurrer as to
the negligent retention cause of action, but later granted summary
adjudication to the defendants on that issue.
Neuwirth appealed, but only as to the issue of vicarious liability.
Justice Fred Woods, in an unpublished opinion for the Court of Appeal,
said she had shown enough evidence for the panel to conclude that the
issue was triable.
He cited a case in which the Court of Appeal held that a car rental agency
had ratified an employer.s assault on a customer because it knew the
employee was volatile, yet placed him in a sensitive situation where
customers were likely to get emotional.
.Although the alleged attack here was not as directly related to
respondents. business, it cannot be determined as a matter of law based on
the allegations of the SAC that the attack was purely a personal attack
such as if it had occurred in similar circumstances in a supermarket,. the
justice wrote. .It is not clear from the allegations whether the attack
was personal or business-related. Consequently, whether the attack was
attenuated from Seidler-Feller.s work, i.e., whether the attack arose out
of Seidler-Feller.s employment or whether he substantially deviated from
his duties for personal purposes, and whether the attack was unusual or
startling given this rabbi.s duties and his prior history are fact issues
which cannot be determined at the demurrer stage..
Attorneys on appeal were Charles L. Fonarow for the plaintiff and Matthew
J. Trostler and Casandra P. Cushman of Borton, Petrini & Conron for the
defendants.
The case is Neuwirth v. Los Angeles Hillel Council, B18505.
10. Too little too late:
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=107679
11. From columnist JAMES TARANTO
in his Opinion Journal (see
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008668 )
"Some have criticized Israel for not responding proportionately to
the attacks, but we'd counsel patience. After all, the Israelis
aren't done yet."
12. A Cycle of Nonsense:
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell071806.asp
13. Prager sums things up:
http://jewishworldreview.com/0706/prager071806.php3
14. Hollywood Airhead:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTVmYTI5ZjQzNjlkMWVmYjliMzE3MDg0M2Q3Y2FlNDc=
Haifa was hit by katyushas again a few minutes ago.
You will be happy to hear that the headquarters of the Israeli Communist
Party in the Hadar neighborhood were not hit.
1. Pity the Left:
http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=6382
2. Juan Cole, the anti-Semitic professor of Middle East studies at the
University of Michigan, has been cheering on the Hezbollah on his web site
juancole.com . Every attack by Israel is a human rights atrocity, every
katyusha is a "response" to an Israeli aggression.
3. The OTHER crime of Ehud Barak:
This system could have made this war moot, had we been permitted to
continue its development. (System that downs katyushas)
http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/missile_systems/systems/THEL.html
Barak claimed the danger had passed.
4. MK Matan Vilnai: Israel could not deal with rockets until hit by them
Aaron Lerner Date: 16 July 2006
Labor MK Matan Vilnai explained in a live interview on Channel Two
Television this afternoon that Israel knew about the dangers of the
rockets.
5. Israeli leftist general tells the world off:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/14/opinion/eddromi.php
6. Haifa University has been closed for the katyusha duration but I have
proposed to the university chiefs that Ilan Pappe, Yuval Yonay, Avraham
Oz, and other leftist anti-Zionist faculty members, be left on campus,
perhaps chained to the lamp-posts, as human shields. I am waiting for
their reply.
The residents of Sderot offered residents of Haifa shelter there if they
want to get away from the katyushas. I am staying put though; after all,
who would feed the cats?
7. The Israeli Moonbatocracy, filled with leftist professors, declared
war yesterday ... on Israeli imperialism:
http://haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=traubman&itemNo=739042
Bombing that demonstration would have done more to stop the war than
bombing Beirut.
8. KENNEDY: VOTE SHOWS 93 SENATORS OUT OF MAINSTREAM
WASHINGTON -- After the Senate voted 93-6 today against setting a timeline
for withdrawal from Iraq, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy held a news
conference to announce that his 93 colleagues are "clearly out of the
mainstream of American opinion."
Senators Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts voted for the timeline,
along with Democrat Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa, Barbara Boxer of
California, Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.
.The six of us represent the heart.s cry of every red-blooded American,.
said Sen. Kennedy. .We hear the voice of the people, and the people say
they want immediate, unconditional withdrawal of U.S. forces from
Iraq...well, at least the people I talk to, which includes regular,
everyday people like my stock broker, my butler, my chauffer, and Nancy
Pelosi. That's at least 0.00000002% of the American population right
there."
Senator Kerry, the presumptive runner-up for the 2008 Democrat
presidential nomination, criticized the legislation introduced by
Republicans as a cheap stunt designed to preempt his own forthcoming Iraq
pullout bill.
.I have a plan for a strategic withdrawal from Iraq,. said Sen. Kerry. .I
plan to release my plan about the same time the Democrat National
Committee unveils its plan for America.s future, or right after Microsoft
releases its new Vista operating system, whichever comes first..
-- Scott Ott, courtesy Scrappleface, Copyright 2006 Scrappleface. All
rights reserved.
8. Here is a peace instrument:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3277034,00.html
Subject: Why the Katyushas are Falling
by Steven Plaut
People have very short memories. Most Israelis do not even recall the
events that have led up to the rain of katyushas and other missiles on
Israeli civilians this week.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon after a long wave of terror attacks on
Israel. At first, the announced Israeli goal was to advance 40
kilometersinside
Lebanon and so drive all the rocket shooters from range of Israel. At first
the operation, called "Peace for Galilee," enjoyed over 90% support from the
Israeli public, including Israeli Arabs.
The army actually advanced more than 40 kilometers. It eventually took
most of Beirut and Israel attempted to install a friendly government in
Lebanon, composed mainly of Lebanese Christians. Following the
assassination of the head of the main Christian militia, the Falange,
Christian militia members infiltrated two Palestinian camps in the suburbs
of Beirut, Sabra and Shatilla, and murdered about 400 civilians in
retaliation. The Bash-Israel forces blamed Israel for that, for a massacre
perpetrated by Christian Lebanese Arabs against Palestinian Arabs.
At one point, Israeli snipers had Arafat in their sites. Ariel Sharon
ordered the snipers to let him go unharmed. Under American pressure,
Israelagreed to a ceasefire and then to let Arafat and his terrorists
be
"evacuated" on American ships to Tunisia. There they languished until
Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres invited them to "return" to the West Bank and
resume terror activities there, after 1993. While US forces were on the
ground in Beirut, the Hezbollah bombed a US army barracks and murdered over
200 GIs. US battleships then bombed Hezbollah villages from the sea in
retaliation. Yes, ships of the same US that always wants Israel to exercise
restraint and avoid bombing areas that contain civilians.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon after 1982 Israeli casualties mounted. Because
of the unexpectedly large number even in the initial fighting, greater than
the number in the Six Day War, public opinion began to turn against the
government. Support dropped as further deaths of troops were caused by
terrorist attrition.
The Israeli Left underwent a process of radicalization that has been
compared by many to that of the American Left during the Vietnam war.
Leftists,
led by the Meretz chiefs Shulamit Aloni and Yossi Sarid, led protests
denouncing the Begin-Sharon government of being war criminals and fascists.
These were the same people who later would demand that Right-wing Jews be
indicted for "incitement" for using harsh rhetoric. A large demonstration
against the war was held in Tel Aviv, and the media fabricated an imaginary
number of 400,000 participants, a number that has assumed mystical power and
has been sanctified by Israel's leftist media.
What had began as mere disagreement by the Israeli Left over tactical
decisions in what had been regarded as an essentially just war quickly
morphed into an outburst of openly anti-Israel extremism in the Left. The
Labor Party joined in, seeing this as a way of overturning the Israeli
election and knocking the Likud government out of power. Meanwhile, an
official state commission of inquiry was set up and later found that, while
Israel had nothing to do with the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, Ariel Sharon
was still indirectly to blame for not having had the prescience to see what
the Falangists would do after their leader was assassinated by Palestinians.
None of the judges on that commission and none of the leftist journalists
trying to demonize Sharon had had the prescience to see what the Falange
would do either, and none of THEM had issued any warnings before the
massacres.
Meanwhile, Israel eventually moved its forces back from Beirut and set
up a "Southern Lebanese Army," allied to Israel and financed by Israel,
manned by Christians and moderate Shi'ites in southern Lebanon. As the
Hezbollah and some other forces grew stronger inside Lebanon, with Syrian
and Iranian support, Israeli troops came increasingly under attack by
bombers and snipers. Israel instituted a series of "controlled carnage"
agreements with the terrorists, under which Israel agreed that as long as
the attacks on Israel were "within reason", Israel would turn the other
cheek. The attacks did not remain within reason, and the terrorists
frequently bombed the northern Galilee. Israel occasionally responded with
brief retaliatory raids, but basically pursued cheek-turning as its defense
policy. Public frustration grew with the toll of soldiers.
While Israel probably could have stopped the attrition attacks against
its troops in southern Lebanon by exercising serious military initiative
against the terrorists and their base villages, it did not. The casualty
toll continued to rise. Israeli public opinion, most as shortsighted as the
politicians, began demanding a unilateral withdrawal to stop the killings of
soldiers. A "peace" movement calling itself Four Mothers led the pressures
for capitulation. One of the Four Mothers was in fact a leftist pro-Saddam
Jewish father, who ran a pro-Saddam anti-America organization in Israel. They
succeeded. Israel's government made a choice. Instead of Israeli soldiers
inside fortresses in Lebanon being targeted by terrorists, Israeli children
in Nahariya and Safed would be the targets for rockets filled with thousands
of lead pellets to maximize civilian carnage.
Ehud Barak implemented a cowardly unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli
troops in Lebanon in the summer of 2000. As part of that, he abandoned the
militia men from the Southern Lebanese Army and their families to the
mercies of the Hezbollah and many were murdered. Some were granted asylum
inside Israel, although Israeli leftists demanded that these "collaborators"
be treated as criminals, because they had been "traitors to their own
people". When they were integrated into Israeli Arab towns, the Israeli
Arabs beat and terrorized them, to the cheers of Israeli Jewish leftists.
Israel's entire intelligence and informant network inside Lebanon was lost
as a result of the withdrawal and the betrayal of the SLA.
Barak's withdrawal took place under fire, with the Hezbollah and others
shooting at the retreating Israeli troops to demonstrate their contempt, and
to show the world that the Jews were successfully being driven out by
terrorism. Barak had no problem with that show or weakness. The withdrawal
was so panicked that Israeli computers with sensitive information were left
behind, as were crates of Bibles.
Ehud Barak's 2000 capitulation in Lebanon was a parody of Dunkirk.
Israel had agreed to a capitulation in exchange for nothing. The Hezbollah
continued to shell northern Israel after the withdrawal and sometimes sent
in infiltrators who murdered and kidnapped. Overall, however, the death
toll was below what it had been when Israeli troops were inside Lebanon. The
Israeli chattering classes saw that as a great victory and as a precedent
for solving the problems of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. All Israel needed
to do was have a unilateral withdrawal and build a nice fence.
Even before the 2000 capitulation by Barak, there were countless
warnings that it would simply result in a massive new war. Nothing
prevented the Hezbollah from setting up thousands of rocket launchers smack
on the Israeli border, waiting for the showdown. I myself published dozens
of articles between 2000 and 2002 explaining exactly what would be the
result of Barak's cowardice. Here is one: (
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/may00/plaut1.htm ) I predicted northern
Israel would be attacked by masses of missiles and that Israel would be
forced to reconquer all of southern Lebanon at a large cost in Israeli
lives. The only difference from what had been before Barak's capitulation
would be that, *this time*, no southern Lebanese Christians or Moslems would
believe any promises made by Israel, having seen how Israel betrayed the
SLA, and so Israel would have no allies nor informants.
Because of 9-11, the showdown was delayed. The US was on the war path
and Syria wanted to keep a low profile. After the liberation of Iraq, Syria,
while controlling the Hezbollah, was trembling in fear, with NATO troops on
its northern and eastern borders, and with pro-US regimes to its south.
Syria was suddenly surrounded. It kept the Hezbollah heeled, for the
moment.
Meanwhile, Syria was partly forced out of Lebanon by US pressure, and
the Hezbollah replaced it with Iran as its arms supplier and patron. When
the Hezbollah infiltrated Israel and murdered three IDF troops, Israel did
nothing. It turned the other cheek. Just a bit more "controlled carnage."
In fact, Israel "bought" the bodies of the three back, plus an abducted
Israeli criminal being held in Lebanon, in exchange for releasing 450
murderers. It never avenged their murders.
And that was all it took. The Hezbollah had its proof. The Jews had
lost their stomach for fighting, were on the run, were pursuing peace
through appeasement and surrender. There was no reason to put off the
showdown any longer.
As a direct result of the cowardice and shortsightedness of Ehud Barak
and the Israeli chattering classes in 2000 who cheered and supported him,
hundreds of rockets and missiles have bathed northern Israel in the past few
days. Haifa has been turned into the Sderot of the North. Nahariya has
become the new Stalingrad.
I admit that I thought the rain of rockets would come sooner. Here is an
article of mine published in 2003:
*Israel's Nightmare Is Not Saddam*
*By **Steven Plaut* <http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=1223>
*FrontPageMagazine.com** January 8, 2003*
I am about to reveal to you a great revelation, a huge scoop, so you had
better hold on to your helmets.
In the coming Gulf War conflagration, the security threat and danger to
Israel will NOT be from Iraqi SCUD missiles. Let me repeat. When the
Americans and the Allies invade Iraq, the threat to Israel will NOT be from
Iraqi missiles. Instead, the threat will be from the Hizbollah in Lebanon,
this thanks to ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the Israeli Labor Party.
Let me explain.
First, Iraq probably has far fewer SCUD launchers than it had in 1991 and
the ones Saddam has may not all work, due to problems with spare parts or
similar. Even if they work, he may not use them; weekend polls are showing
that Israelis favor massive military retaliation against Iraq by huge
majorities EVEN if Iraq attacks "ONLY" with ordinary conventional weapons
(Haaretz, Jan 6, 03). So it is quite possible Israel will shun the sage
advice of President Bush and Secretary Powell to retaliate against Iraq by
aggressively turning the other cheek. (The Administration has been sending
Israel undiplomatic messages almost daily letting Israel know the US expects
it to exhibit pure Quaker pacifism if Saddam tries to provoke it.)
Then even if Iraq DOES manage to shoot the missiles, it will probably be
able to do so for no longer than a few days before the US finishes mopping
up - my personal prediction is the US ground invasion will last six days and
will become known as the Second Six Day War. If Iraq does launch missiles at
Israel, it is likely that most will not get through because of Israel's
anti-missile technology. And if some do get through, they are as likely to
land on Arab towns and villages as on Israeli Jews, what with the notorious
inaccuracy of SCUDs. In fact, Sharon could even HELP some land on Jericho,
Ramallah, Nablus, Gaza City, etc. And any SCUD that might hit Tel Aviv is
likely to produce less casualties than one of the regular Oslo suicide
bombings, such as the twin bombings a few night back in Tel Aviv's old
central bus station perpetrated by the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade under the
direct personal control and command of Yassir Arafat.
So should Israelis take a deep breath and laugh off the security threat? The
answer is of course NO. There IS a real security threat to Israel from the
Gulf War, but it is not from Iraq. It is from Lebanon. Because of Ehud
Barak's policy of unilateral capitulation and withdrawal from southern
Lebanon when he turned it over to the mercies of the Hizbollah back when
Barak was Prime Minister before Ariel Sharon took over, there are now
thousands of missiles sitting just meters outside the Israeli border with
Lebanon, controlled by the Hizbollah. They are aimed at Haifa and all of
northern Israel and some could reach Tel Aviv.
The Hizbollah is itching to convert the US attack on Iraq into an all-out
Arab-Israeli war. The Iraqis would be overjoyed to have the Hizbollah try to
create the illusion that the Gulf War is a "War of Civilizations" against
the Islamic world. The Hizbollah is anxious to create maximum disruption for
the Americans, and what better way to do so than creating a diversion they
hope will rally the Arab world behind their jihad and Saddam's, just when it
is least convenient for the United States? What better way to help out
Saddam than making sure Israel is goaded into fighting in Lebanon smack
while the US is invading Iraq, all this to rally solidarity among the
Moslems against the "Zionist-Crusader aggression"?
The Hizbollah of course is little more than a puppet of Syria. Syria is
content to play spoiler behind the scenes, feeling secure that American rage
is directed against other Arab fascist regimes, at least for the moment.
Syria is making little attempt to hide the fact that it is abetting Saddam,
and the Western news agencies have been reporting that Saddam is hiding his
weapons and equipment, including possibly weapons of mass destruction,
inside Syria until the pesky inspectors get out of the way. Syria is likely
to give the Hizbollah the green light to turn all of northern Israel into a
killing field, just as the US ground forces enter Iraq, figuring the US will
prevent Israel from meaningful reprisals against the Hizbollah and its
puppet-masters.
All of this is now more than likely because of the policies of Ehud Barak
and his parody of Dunkirk two and a half years ago, when he ordered
Israelto capitulate to the Hizbollah and evacuate its security zone in
southern
Lebanon. The Barak theory, long since proclaimed as gospel by the Israeli
Left and its amen choruses overseas, is that once Israel has withdrawn from
Lebanon, the Hizbollah will have "nothing to fight about". Got that? When
the rockets start raining down on Israeli schools and homes from the
northern border, will Israelis have the courage to remind Barak and his
Labor Party friends about how they assured everyone that the Arabs never
attack Israel when they have "nothing to fight about"?
In fact the Arabs have never needed "anything to fight over". They have been
attacking Jews in Israel for a hundred years without ever having "anything
to fight over". Did bin-Laden have "anything to fight over"? Did he need
anything?
The "nothing to fight about" doctrine has of course also long been the
underlying foundation of the Oslo "peace process" from the start. If
Israeljust gives the PLO everything it wants, such as what Barak
offered them at
Camp David II in 2000, then of course the Palestinians will have "nothing to
fight about". Except they reacted to that insane offer by launching war. And
if current Israeli Labor Party contender and leftist Amram Mitzna offers the
PLO even more than what Barak did, as he promises, then the PLO will again
"have nothing to fight about". Except they will.
Even if Israel granted the Palestinians absolutely everything the EU
Israel-bashers and the State Department "Arabists" think it should, the PLO
will simply use its new state to attack Israel and launch new atrocities and
wars. Tell the "nothing to fight over" theory to the families of the 23
murdered people in Tel Aviv this week, murdered by Palestinians who have
nothing to fight over and by the "peace process".
What became of Ehud Barak? The same dim-witted fellow who says that had he
been born a Palestinian he would have become a terrorist? Well, he is one of
the many creatures already scrambling and positioning themselves on the
decks of Amram Mitzna's sinking Labor Party ship, hoping to "pull a Nixon"
and compete for party Chief after Mitzna's campaign crashes in Oslo flames
in the coming elections.
There seems little doubt the Hizbollah will rain missiles down on northern
Israel when the Gulf War begins. (The civil defense preparations in
Israelseem to be designed for the Hizbollah attacks mainly, not any
odd Iraqi SCUD
getting through.) What is not at all clear yet is whether Israelis will have
the commonsense and minimal instinct of self-preservation to tear up the
Oslo "accords" and deal with Arafat and the PLO as they should have long
ago.
*Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa in northern Israel.*
Here are some other earlier pieces on Lebanon:
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=992
http://www.conservativetruth.org/opinionet/archives2/ccsp/2002/ccsp30.htm
Under the Katyushas
By Steven Plaut
Haifa, Israel
I am writing this in between ducking in and out of the bomb shelter as
Haifa is bathed by the Katyusha rockets and other missiles that Ehud Barak
has now fired at the city. Why Ehud Barak? Because as Israeli Prime
Minister in 2000, HE ordered the cowardly unilateral withdrawal of Israeli
troops from the security zone in southern Lebanon, and so HE positioned the
thousands of Hezbollah rockets on Israel's northern border.
It occurred to me that now would be as good a time as any to sum up
everything that has been learned about the Middle East conflict, that is,
everything that the Israeli government and chattering classes refused to
learn for the past two decades.
1. Nice fences do not stop missiles, rockets, and mortars.
2. Complete removal of Israeli forces and Jewish settlers from an area
does not achieve anything, and merely signals Israeli weakness, inviting
escalated terror and aggression from the Arabs.
3. The Hezbollah and the Hamas cannot be defeated with air strikes. There
is no effective alternative to ground invasion and ongoing control of the
ground.
4. Unless the Israeli military controls the ground on the OTHER side
of fences, those fences achieve nothing.
5. Goodwill gestures by Israel increase terror.
6. Goodwill gestures by Israel never produce moderation of Arab goals
and demands, but rather produce the opposite.
7. Terror is not caused by settlements, but rather by the *removal* of
settlements.
8. Terror is not caused by Israeli military occupation, but rather by
the *removal *of Israeli military occupation.
9. It is impossible for there to be two sovereign entities between the
Jordon River and the Mediterranean.
10. No matter how many concessions Israel makes, the world will always
justify Arab terrorism, because there is always one more capitulation that
Israel failed to make (e.g., giving up the "Shebaa Farm" on the Golan
Heights)
11. No matter how nice Israel is to Israeli Arabs, no matter how many
affirmative action programs it implements, it will always be accused of
being an "apartheid regime".
12. The Israeli Far Left is an openly anti-Semitic movement that
seeks Israel's destruction and automatically endorses the enemies of
Israel in all things.
13. The Israeli Labor Party and its Kadima cousin may be more
effective at fighting terror, once they decide to do so, than the Likud.
The reason is that if the Likud were fighting terror, the Israeli Left
would take to the streets in mass demonstrations against Israeli imperialism
and aggression, and the leftist Israeli media would declare that 400,000
protesters turned out.
14. The *real* enemy of Israel is not Arab fascism but Jewish
leftism.
15. The world likes to see Jewish civilians murdered by terrorists
and will applaud and justify all such murders as comeuppance for the Jews
for being so insensitive.
16. The Israeli Left will oppose every conceivable act of Israeli
self-defense, other than total capitulation.
17. Israeli niceness and flexibility fan anti-Semitism.
18. Israel-bashing is nothing more than anti-Semitism and
Israel-bashers are increasingly open about their delight at seeing Jewish
civilians murdered.
19. Israeli pursuit of the "peace process" has triggered a world-wide
storm of anti-Semitism.
20. Terrorists cannot be appeased.
21. Arab terrorists do not morph into statesmen.
22. There are no Palestinian moderates.
23. Israel bashers do not care about dead Arab civilians, other than
as a useful bludgeon with which to delegitimize Israel.
24. The Western Left would celebrate if Israeli Jews were shipped off
to concentration camps in cattle cars, and would demand improved rail
service.
25. The vast majority of Israeli Arabs want to see Israel destroyed
and the Jews thrown into the sea.
26. There are hundreds of Jewish professors in Israel who serve as an
academic Fifth Column that will do anything to collaborate with the enemies
of their country.
27. The Arabs will not accept an independent Israel in ANY set of
borders, no matter how small. Hence one achieves nothing by reducing
Israel's territory, other than to signal weakness and destructibility.
28. Much of the Western media believes that there are no problems on
earth that could not be greatly improved by destroying Israel.
29. Most of the governments of Europe do not believe Jews should be
treated with respect, and certainly do not think Jews should ever be allowed
to defend themselves.
30. The only country on earth that is expected to respond to mass
murder of its civilians through turning of the other cheek is Israel.
The only country on earth that spent many years trying to defeat
aggression and terrorism by turning the other cheek is Israel.
31. No matter how Israel responds to aggression and terrorism, it
will always be a "disproportionate" response.
32. Those who claim that anti-Zionism is different and distinct from
anti-Semitism are anti-Semites.
33. The only people on earth whom the Left believes should be denied
the right to self-determination and self-defense are the Jews.
34. "Palestinians" are not a people and never were. They are simply
Arabs who happened to migrate into historic Western Palestine. They
have no right whatsoever to statehood.
35. The Golan Heights are not "Syrian" and never were.
36. Noam Chomsky is an anti-Semite and Norman Finkelstein is a
neo-nazi. People who endorse them are anti-Semites, even if they
happen to be Israeli Jews.
37. Israeli politicians are among the stupidest on earth.
38. Israeli leftists never learn from the failures of their policies
and "ideas". Every failure is simply because their policies were not
applied thoroughly *enough.*
39. The moral and legal responsibility for every single Arab civilian
killed or injured in the Middle East conflict rests squarely upon the
shoulders of the Arab fascists and terrorists.
40. There is no moral or legal reason for Israel to refrain from
attacking terrorists and murderers when they hide among civilians.
41. "Anarchists" and others who protest against Israel's security
wall want the wall removed because they want terrorists to murder Jewish
civilians.
42. Palestinians are the Sudeten Germans of the Middle East.
43. Israel has no obligation to share its water resources with the
"Palestinians" or anyone else.
44. There are no non-military solutions to the problem of terrorism.
45. One can only make peace with one's enemies. One also only makes
war with one's enemies.
46. There are no significant differences between the agenda of the
PLO and the agenda of the Hamas and Hezbollah.
47. The Middle East conflict is not a marital spat. Going through
the pretense of holding hands and holding talks does not calm tensions and
achieves nothing.
48. One cannot make peace by pretending that war does not exist.
49. One cannot buy off anti-Semites and Islamofascists with trade
concessions and subsidies.
50. The only way to stop terrorism is to kill terrorists.
1. The following article was published in National Review on December 3,
2001
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-plaut120301.shtml
Life in Haifa
Will there be an awakening at last in this quiet dream world of Leftist
delusion? (Published after a civilian bus was blown up by a suicide
bomber in Haifa)
By Steven Plaut, professor at the University of Haifa.
December 3, 2001 9:35 a.m.
Haifa is Israel's third city, but by international standards it is a small
town. It is also the least Israeli of Israel's cities. It has weather like
the Riviera. It is cosmopolitan: On the top of the mountain German is
still spoken, at the bottom Arabic, and in the middle Russian. It has the
country's only subway train. It has lots of trees and a huge
environmentalist movement. In Haifa, children dare not venture outside nor
make noise during the siesta hours of the afternoon. A dirty park bench
will produce storms of protests and letters to the editor.
Haifa was always the least religious city in the country, and buses ran on
the Sabbath long before they did elsewhere. It is reputed to have the best
Jewish-Arab relations in the country. A bleeding-heart institution for
Jewish-Arab dialogue named Beit Hagefen is a major symbol of the city.
Haifa is also arguably the largest remaining bastion of the Israeli Left.
It has never had a mayor not from the Labor party. Its current mayor
postures to the left of Ehud Barak, hoping to grab his position as leader
of the Labor party. "Red Haifa," as it was once known thanks to its
trade-union ruling class, is in fact a middle-class city of yuppie
elitists and employees of the high-tech industries. It was the only
serious city that voted for Barak in the last elections. It is home to the
Technion and the University of Haifa, the second of which contains the
largest Arab student body in the country as well as a gaggle of extremist
anti-Zionist "New Historians." Haifa is home to the largest chapter of the
Israeli Communist party, and the comrades are largely Jews, unlike
chapters elsewhere. The Haifa Theater is a bastion of anti-Zionism, where
any play purporting to show that Zionists are Nazis is sure to be staged.
The university is almost wall-to-wall Leftist, and semi-Marxist Meretz is
considered as far right as most academics are willing to venture. The
Leftism infiltrates everywhere, and even my colleagues in the business
school have ideological positions ordinarily only to be found among social
workers or deconstructionist sociologists.
Haifa Leftists have long been convinced their city would be spared PLO
atrocities because Haifaites are such nice, progressive people, and
because they purport to have such good relations with local Arabs. When
many Jews stopped coming to restaurants and stores owned by local Arabs
briefly after the high-holiday pogroms last year, teams of Haifaites,
including many tenured Lefties, made a point of showing their solidarity
with their Arab neighbors, at the same time that their Arab neighbors were
making a point of showing their solidarity with PLO bombers and Hamas
suicide bombers.
Haifa Lefties believed they were protected due to their progressive image,
their obsession with recreational compassion and environmentalism, and
their Leftist solidarity with Arabs. They were sure that the wave of Arab
atrocities in which Israel is being bathed would pass over them, like a
Palestinian angel of death in a parody of the story of the Exodus.
Needless to say, they were wrong.
Will there be an awakening at last in this quiet dream world of Leftist
delusion?
No there will not. For one, Haifa yuppies do not take buses. Within a day
or three, they will return to their habitual peacespeak. The Peace Now
stickers will reappear. The university leftists will resume their
activities. The mayor will call for a return to peace talks with the PLO
with greater Israeli flexibility. The local Jewish communists will resume
their protests against occupation, as will the Arab student unions. The
local politicians will resume their sacred mission of making sure the
malls stay open on the Sabbath. The Arab students will hold celebrations
and parties in which the bus bombing today will be toasted tomorrow, while
the Leftist Jewish students and faculty will rote-recite their solidarity
with them and pat themselves on their backs for sticking to their
ideological guns in the face of adversity and atrocities by their peace
partners.
The Kishinev pogrom in 1903 is supposed to have changed history. It
shocked Eastern European Jews into seeking to escape czarist Russia for
safety. It inspired a famous poem by Bialik. And in many ways it was the
trigger for the formation of mass immigration by Jews to the Land of
Israel, then misnamed Palestine. It brought down the wrath of the world on
czarism. At the Kishinev pogroms, 45 helpless and defenseless Jews were
killed and about 600 wounded.
Shimon Peres and the Israeli Left have created a situation in which a new
Kishinev Pogrom takes place in Israel every week, while its legendary army
sits along the sidelines, shackled by the politicians, and exercises
restraint, while its leaders await the day when they can conduct peace
talks with the pogromchiks.
2. Patriot Missiles are no deployed on the campus of the University of
Haifa.
Steps from my office. There most effective use in ending this war would
be if they were fired through the office windows of certain University of
Haifa faculty members.
3. You can always count on Haaretz. A few days before the war it ran
this:
We need a Nasrallah
By Aluf Benn Haaretz 6 July 2006 [IMRA: A week before the war]
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/735153.html
Nasrallah hates Israel and Zionism no less than do the Hamas leaders,
Shalit's kidnappers and the Qassam squads. But as opposed to them - he has
authority and responsibility, and therefore his behavior is rational and
reasonably predictable. Under the present conditions, that's the best
possible situation. Hezbollah is doing a better job of maintaining quiet
in
the Galilee than did the pro-Israeli South Lebanese Army.
In the territories there is no such Nasrallah today. PA Chair Mahmoud
Abbas
(Abu Mazen) is opposed to terror and wants diplomatic negotiations, but he
operates as a tortured intellectual and a commentator, rather than as an
authoritative leader. The Hamas government, which at first showed
promising
signs of organization and discipline, has behaved like him and shrugged
its
shoulders during the kidnapping crisis. The weapons in Gaza are split
among
organizations, gangs and clans, which Israel has difficulty deterring.
The events of the past weeks in Gaza have once again demonstrated that the
essential condition for a quiet border is a responsible finger on the
trigger on the other side. The conclusion we must come to is that until
the
appearance of a factor that will take control of security and weapons on
the
West Bank - Israel will not be able to withdraw from there. Negotiations
with Abbas are not sufficient, nor is an agreement with him. It is more
important that his statement about "one law and one weapon" be implemented
on the ground. Even if it is implemented by a Palestinian Nasrallah.
4. Wanna know how we got to this point?
http://www.algemeiner.com/
5. Welcome to Kapostan:
Israel's treasonous far Left is out cheering for a Hezbollah victory and
for as many Israeli civilian deaths as possible. This I am exaggerating?
Look at this:
http://counterpunch.com/reinhart07142006.html
http://counterpunch.com/atzmon07142006.html (writer is on record favoring
the destruction of synagogues)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/738739.html
and
Opinion/Editorial
What Does Israel Want?
Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2006
"I know these generals as well as one could know them. In the last week,
they have had a field day. No more random use of one-kilo bombs,
battleships, choppers and heavy artillery. The weak and insignificant new
minister of defense, Amir Perez, accepted without hesitation the army
demand for crushing the Gaza strip and grinding Lebanon to dust. But it
may not be enough. It can still deteriorate into a full scale war with the
hapless army of Syria and my ex-students may even push by provocative
actions towards such an eventuality. And, if you believe what you read in
the local press here, it may even escalate into a long distance war with
Iran, backed by a supreme American umbrella.
Even the most partial reports in the Israeli press of what was proposed by
the army to Ehud Olmert..s government as possible operations in the coming
days, indicate clearly what enthuses the Israeli generals these days.
Nothing less that a total destruction of Lebanon, Syria and Tehran. "
(Offset by a lone voice of sanity at Haaretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/738737.html)
6. More on Judicial Fascism:
http://www.somebodyhelpme.info/plaut/Free_Speech_and_Israeli_Courts.html
More September 10th Syndrome on Sept 12:
Labor Party's Amram Mitzna, who ran on a platform of unilateral
capitulation and withdrawal when challenging Ariel Sharon in the election
for Prime Minister, in Maariv July 14:
"The (2000) withdrawal from Lebanon was correct and justified, but was
done too late and under circumstances that llowed the Hezbollah to brag
that it had expelled us from Lebanon. Under these circumstances, it was
clear that one day a conflict would erupt, in which we would have to
restore our deterrent powers."
In other words, Mitzna, who took time off from striking corrupt deals
with his oligarch cronies as Haifa Mayor in order to endorse Ehud Barak's
capitulation and cowardly withdrawal from Lebanon with his full
enthusiasm, now insists that if that same cowardly capitulation had taken
place just a bit earlier and under Mitzna's own guidance, then the
Hezbollah would today be shooting batches of flowers at Haifa and Nahariya
rather than Katyushas.
2. Poetic justice: some ARab towns in the Galilee that are centers of
Islamism and Arab fascism were hit by katyushas and a couple dozen were
injured.
3. A five year old girl from Safed is in critical condition after being
struck in the head by shrapnel from a katyusha rocket. None of those
bleeding hearts who demanded that Israel be destroyed because children in
Gaza got injured have anything to say about this. Gideon Levy, the
anti-Israel extremist at Haaretz who devotes every one of his weekend
columns to some Arab who was injured when Israel shot back, has nothing so
say about the Safed girl. The leftist professors who sign petitions
endorsing the boycotts of Israel because Palestinian children get injured
when Israel shoots back, have said nothing about the Safed girl.
INN.com reprinted past statements by Israeli leaders on the question of
whether Israel could someday be hit by rockets from Gaza. Some are
delicious:
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=107309
All you do all day is threaten that there will be Katyusha rockets landing
in Ashkelon. Would you mind telling me why there are no rockets fired from
Aqaba to Eilat?"
Foreign Minister Labor MK Shimon Peres
We're familiar with the Likud's horror stories. They promised us Katyushas
from Gaza, but Gaza has been under the primary control of the Palestinian
Authority for more than a year now, and there hasn't been a single
Katyusha.
Prime Minister, Labor MK Yitzchak Rabin
Jerusalem Post
Jun 20, 1995
We must take into account that after withdrawal, Ashkelon, a major Israeli
city, will be within the effective range of Kassam rockets. In the future,
when sea and airports are built in Gaza and we will have no control, they
will have Katyushas with a longer range that can also reach Kiryat Gat or
southern Ashdod.
Major General (Res.) Yakov Amidror (opponent of "disengagement")
Maariv, Feb. 5, 2004
After the withdrawal, Kassam rockets will rain on Ashkelon.
NRP Head, MK Effie Eitam
Kol Israel, Israel Radio
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
If the Disengagement plan is carried out, Kassam rocket attacks will be
the lot of cities from Ashkelon to Ofakim [also inside Israel], and will
become a daily occurrence.
Yisrael Beiteinu Head, MK Avigdor Lieberman
I anticipate that the level of terrorism will drop after the disengagement
and after pragmatic Arab forces take control.
Defense Minister, Kadima MK Shaul Mofaz
Arutz Sheva
Jul 02, 2004
Before the withdrawal from Lebanon, the Intelligence Directorate also
threatened us with Katyushas reaching Hadera and we see what actually
happened. I estimate, and my estimate is just as valid as those that
threaten us with horrors, that after we leave the Gaza Strip, terrorism
will decrease, not increase.
Former Mossad Head, Labor MK Dani Yatom
Maariv, Feb. 5, 2004
My own addition:
From "The Israeli-PLO Accord," by Steven Plaut, Midstream, November 1993
(published 6 weeks after the Oslo "breakthrough")
"'It' might happen after the entire West Bank and Gaza were under PLO
rule, or 'it' might even happen earlier....Katyushas pour down on Israeli
population centers. Some rockets were financed with Arafat's share of th
erevenues from the Nobel Peace Prize. Gangs of terrorists cross th eGreen
Line and there is an endless chain of blood baths... The media ar efilled
with stories about th eunequal status and oppression of Israeli greenline
Arabs. The Israeli Left concurs, arguing that only more concessions will
end the violence....As th edeath toll mounts, Israeli reprisals increase
in ferocity. A full-scale war commences in which Syria, Iran and maybe
even Egypt rush in to defend their Palestinian brethren, helping them
resist Israeli aggression and imperialism."
1. Speaking of the "September 10th Syndrome", it seems it can sometimes
continue even on September 12th.
The katyushas falling on Haifa, Nahariya, and Safed might as well have
been personally fired into Israel by Ehud Barak, who implemented the
"Israeli Unilateral Retreat in Exchange for Nothing" doctrine for
achieving peace.
So did little Ehud learn something from this week's events? Not a bit!
Here is Ehud defending his decision to abandon northern Israel to the
merices of the Hezbollah missiles:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885993858&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Hey what are YOU complaining about? Didn't his unilateral surrender to
the Hezbollah result in 6 years of tranquility until now? He deserves a
medal for his shrewd foresight!
Oh, and here is Yossi Beilin proposing that Israel stop the rockets by
turning the Golan Heights over to Syria:
'Meretz faction chairman Yossi Beilin backed the military operation but
asked Peretz to keep the operation's end objective in mind. "An attack on
Hizbullah is justified, but in the end we will have to come to an
understanding, including one with Syria," he said.'
Meanwhile, I really am concerned about the parking congestion problems
throughout the Hezbollah-dominated areas in southern Lebanon. I really
think the humane thing for Israel to do would be to help relieve those
problems with some new large parking lots.
2. So is there any hope that Norman Finkelstein or Noam Chomsky is on
their annual "Solidarity with Hizbollah" summer vacation?
3. Fox News: "One of the hits on Haifa was not a rocket
but a missile fired by a contingent of Iranian guards".
4. Call for IDF to bomb anarchists offices:
https://israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/4831/index.php
5. War Now:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23367
6. Can we get the ISM to set up shop in Southern Lebanon?
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23361
1. Open Letter
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Jerusalem
Mr. Prime Minister:
As you know, Haifa was hit this evening by at least two katyusha
rockets. I demand that you evacuate myself and my family at once and move
us to some place safe - to Gush Katif. We want to repopulate the Gush
Katif settlements in Gaza as part of R&D = Re-Occupation and
DeNazification, so that we can feel safe again. Please Mr. Prime
Minister, help protect my family from terror attacks by reconquering Gaza.
Sincerely yours,
****
2. Ehud Barak was on TV a few moments ago. He was asked about his
cowardly unilateral decision to order Israeli troops out of Sourthern
Lebanon in 2000. Leaving Hezbollah smack on the border with thousands of
rockets. He stammered, hemmed and hawed.
Israel is now going to have to reconquer southern Lebanon and restore
the Israeli security zone, or else the katyushas will contine to rain down
on northern Israel.
I suggest that the scores of soldiers who will be killed reversing Ehud
Barak's cowardly decision to cut and run be buried in a special cemetery
that should be named "Ehudgrad".
That boom you just heard was a katyusha rocket hitting Haifa a couple
of miles from my house.
You will all be very relieved to hear that it did
not hit the home of Ilan Pappe or any other Post-Zionist professors or
Haaretz columnists.
I could not resist:
Onward Jewish Soldiers
Onward, Jewish soldiers, marching as to war,
With the Star of David going on before.
I.D.F will master, lead against the foe;
Forward into battle see its banners go!
Refrain
Onward, Jewish soldiers, marching as to war,
With the Star of David going on before.
At the sign of triumph off Nasrallah flees;
On then, Jewish soldiers, on to victory!
Hell.s foundations quiver at the shout of praise;
Brothers, arm your choppers, loud your anthems raise.
Refrain
Like a mighty army moves the I.D.F.;
Brothers, we are treading terrorism f'd.
We are not divided, all one body we,
One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.
Refrain
What Moses established that I hold for true.
What the Tannaim said, that I believe too.
Long as earth endureth, men the faith will hold,
Kingdoms, nations, empires, in destruction rolled.
Refrain
Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,
But the tanks of Moses constant will remain.
Goons from hell can never 'gainst that force prevail;
We have it down in writing, and that cannot fail.
Refrain
Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng,
Blend with ours your voices in the triumph song.
Glory, laud and honor unto Asad's home,
This through countless ages men and angels shone.
Refrain
In the past every time the Left's "conception" and Oslo completely fell
apart, I would hurry to celebrate. Sure, it would be in the middle of
terrorist carnage, or the Hamas "election" victory, or Hezbollah outrages,
but all that would be a small price to pay if it meant that at long last
Israel would awake from its long hallucinatory pipedream of "peace
process", would take to the tanks and planes, and implement R&D =
Re-Occupation and DeNazification, at long long last.
Each time I would show up on campus with a large grin, expecting all
the moonbats to be ripping out their hair and rending their clothes in
mourning over how stupid they had been, how obvious it is NOW that their
entire "understanding" of the conflict has been completely wrong, how
there was no solution to the war besides victory over the savages, how
the entire set of policies implemented at the Left's direction ever since
1993 (and perhaps earlier) were simply 180 degrees in the incorrect
direction and had made the situation infinitely worse.
Of course, I was always wrong. There was no such awakening from the
pipedream, just an insistence that Israel had not gone far enough in
appeasing, self-abasement, self-humiliation, and capitulation.
I must confess my perpetual weakness, because part of me still is
deluded into think thating the opening of an all-out war against Israel
this week by the Hezbollah and Hamas would be enough to wake up the
clueless lemmings of Israel, the wishful thinking dullards, and the
deluded Left with its Me-Too-Kadima-and-Likud "Right".
Actually if some katyushas on the Galilee were enough to achieve that, I
would propose we all say a special prayer of thanksgiving to He who has
given us the katyusha of hope and national recovery.
Meanwhile, I still cannot help gloating as the entire edifice of
Leftist stupidity comes crashing down, yet again. There are so few
reasons for amusement.
I regret to tell you that it got my poetic juices a-working.
The New Song of the Israeli Left (and fellow travellers)
From West Bank Story
Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics almost by Stephen Sondheim.
(to the tune of "I Feel Pretty")
We feel stupid,
Oh, so stupid,
We feel stupid, dimwitted and dumb!
What a pity
That we didn't wise up some.
We feel helpless,
Oh, so helpless
It's alarming how clueless We feel!
And so stupid,
That We hardly can believe 'tis real.
See the stupid prof in that mirror there,
Who can that retarded prof be?
Such a stupid face,
Such a stupid grin,
Such a stupid mind,
Such a stupid he!
We feel useless
And abusive,
As katyushas extinguish our plan,
After so long
With the state eating lard from our hand!
(La lalalalalalalalala)
Have you met my good friend Avnery,
The craziest bat in the place?
You'll know him the minute you see him,
He's the one with the henna paint face.
We thought we had love.
We though we were really in Spain.
We offered our love,
We were Hamas-infatuated insane
It must be the heat
Or some rare disease,
Or too much to eat
Or maybe our fleas.
We feel stupid,
Oh, so stupid
That the city should give us the boot.
A committee
Should be organized to execute.
GIRLS
La la la la . . .
We feel dizzy,
In a tizzy,
We feel fizzy and cloddish bovine,
And so stupid,
Yossi Beilin can just go resign!
GIRLS
La la la la . . .
See the stupid Left in that mirror there:
GIRLS
What mirror where?
What can that retarded camp be?
GIRLS
Which? What? Where? Whom?
Such a stupid camp,
Such a stupid plan,
Such a stupid psyche,
Such a stupid me!
GIRLS
Such a stupid me!
ALL
We feel stupid,
Oh, so stupid
That the city should give us the boot.
A committee
Should be organized to execute.
1. Formula for Success
Yesterday a Hezbollah terror team cut the security fence along Israel's
Lebanese border, entered Israel, murdered soldiers and kidnapped others,
got away back into Lebanon, and then drenched northern Israel with rockets
and mortars fired OVER the fence.
Under the circumstance, we bring you the following generic article that
could have appeared in any Israeli newspaper on any day in any week over
the past few years, up until last week:
"Why Argue with Success?
"By Yossi Optimossi
"The security fence along the Lebanese border PROVES that a similar fence
can work in Gaza and the West Bank. After all, those naysayers and
rightwing inciters consumed with their own unenlightened negativity warned
that Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Southern Lebanon would create a
security nightmare, where Israel would be unable to stop the terrorism.
But we have seen that the result of the unilateral withdrawal was just the
opposite of what they warned. Look how wrong they have been proven!
"Over the past few years it has been demonstrated that all Israel now
needs is one of those hi-tech gee-whiz security fences with all the
electronic gizmos, just like along the Lebanese border. Once there are no
Israeli troops in Arab lands where they do not belong, the Arab side will
have no further reason to engage in terror and military aggression against
Israel. Simple as pie!
"That is why this Lebanese formula for success must also be duplicated in
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. A serious security fence with all the
electronic gizmos is all we need, although the fence should be built right
along the Green Line lest it disrupt the lives of Palestinians. Once
there are no settlers and no Israel soldiers in Palestinian lands, the
Palestinians will have no reason to engage in terror either. Us over
here, Them over there, with a nice strong security fence between us to
prevent the odd renegade terrorist from trying to attack Israel inside its
Green Line.
"Territory and military control of the ground are passe. There is no
further need for such things. Simply extending the formula of success
that has performed so well on the Lebanese border to Gaza and the West
Bank as part of 'Disengagement' and 'Convergence' is all that is needed to
extract the Middle East from the endless cycle of violence.
"The Doubting Thomases have been proven wrong. The Lebanese security
fence has supplied the missing solution!"
2.One of the best piece to date on Israel's judicial assault on free
speech:
http://jewishvoiceandopinion.com/pdf/200607.pdf
(Top story, then you need to follow pages in the pdf document)
3. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51021
Israel: Remember Dresden
By Eugene Narrett
4. IDF: Muhammad Deif in critical condition
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3274784,00.html
1. Ever since Ehud Barak ordered the IDF to abandon its positions in
southern Lebanon in cowardly retreat, the Israeli Left has been patting
itself on the back, insisting that this unilateral withdrawal had not only
"worked" but could serve as a role model for the Gaza Strip and West
Bank. The
abandonment of Gush Katif was largely based on it. It "worked" in the
sense that the Lebanese border was "relatively" tranquil after the
capitulation, with periodic shellings and murders, but with a death toll
below what it had been while the IDF was still on the ground inside
Lebanon. It was relatively quiet NOT because of the cowardice but because
Syria was being cowed by an enraged US warring against the Islamofascist
enemy that had attacked the US on 9-11. Iran was also lying low, the
better part of valor, not knowing where the US troops would stop. That
kept the Hezbollah reined in for a while.
Exactly six years have passed since that capitulation. For six years
I have argued that the Left's attitude towards that "success" and the
celebration of it by the Israeli media illustrates the "September 10th
syndrome." On September 10th, 2001, there were no doubt oodles of public
fugures in the US ready to swear that there was no chance terrorists could
strike the US, and that the US was secure, terror defeated.
Like in Mark Twain's famous quip, they were just a little premature.
True, Syria had kept the Lebanese border relatively quiet for a while.
After all, Syria suddenly found itself with NATO forces on its northern
and eastern borders, and Western regimes to its south. But control of the
Hezbollah passed to Iran, and Syria was itself forced to cut many of its
outward signs of control in Lebanon.
But the belief that the Lebanese border problem had been "solved" by
Israeli cowardice was nothing more than another case of the September 10th
syndrome. In reality, the border was not calm. Shelling and
cross-border incursions by the terrorists took place all the time, and the
Hezbollah was wandering the Gaza Strip freely and helping teh Hamas build
its bombs.
Today, the Hezbollah has thousands of rockets along the border it
can fire at any time, turning Haifa and Hadera into rubble. The head
terrorist of the Hezbollah promised to do so on TV this evening. I
suppose one benefit of that would be to make the countless far-leftists in
Haifa experience what those in Sderot undergo and perhaps make them a
little less snide and seditious.
Today's murders and kidnappings of Israeli soldiers are a direct
result of Ehud Barak's cowardly abandonment of Israeli positions in
southern Lebanon. But, even more so, they are the direct result of
arguably the stupidest state decision Israel ever made, the decision two
and a half years ago to release hundreds of terrorists and murderers in
excahneg for a single common criminal and bodies of three murdered
soldiers, while never avenging the murders of those three soldiers (one
of them a Bedouin by the way).
At the time of that "prisoner exchange" outrage and boondoggle, I
published the following article in many venues. I reprint it here:
I AM ASHAMED TO BE AN ISRAELI
By Dr. Steven Plaut
Haifa University
February 2004
I have spent most of the past 12 years being ashamed to be an Israeli.
Israeli governments made me ashamed, and they did so by debasing,
disgracing and humiliating me as a Jew and as an Israeli.
I have been ashamed for 12 years at being an Israeli because this was the
period in which the governments of Israel abandoned the struggle for
Jewish national survival. They stopped trying to defend me and all other
Jews. They lectured me that it was my fault that the Arab fascists were
attacking Jews, and that it was within my power to stop the carnage if
only I would agree to demean myself sufficiently, to grovel before the
terrorists of the Middle East, and to appease the anti-Semites. I could
achieve peace if I would agree to place my neck in an Arab noose, but if I
refuse to do so then I would be the impediment to peace and my obstinacy
would be to blame for all further carnage.
For 12 years, my government pursued a policy of defending me and my family
by abandoning all attempts to defend us. My government decided to pursue
peace by pretending that war did not exist. After two millennia of
anti-Semitism, my government decided that anti-Semitism does not REALLY
exist, and that when people randomly murder Jewish children it is because
they have some legitimate grievances, because they have suffered, and
because Jews have shown them insufficient sensitivity.
My government implemented policies based on the presumption that the
making of concessions to blood-thirsty terrorists would be rewarded with
moderation and goodwill, that importing armed Nazis into the suburbs of
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would cause them to seek peace. My government
followed policies based on the notion that the Jews were evil,
insensitive, and selfish. My government decided that if Jews would only
"share" their land and resources with those who rule the entire territory
from the Atlantic Ocean to Central Asia, that is, with those who refuse to
agree to any "sharing" that allows a Jewish state to exist anywhere in the
Middle East, then there would be peace.
My government decided that rewarding terrorists for violence would end
violence, and then told me that there was simply no alternative to
coddling terrorists and Islamofascists.
My government pursued peace by pretending that war did not exist. My
government sought peace through arming and bankrolling terrorists. My
government decided that anti-Semitism can only be overcome by redressing
the "underlying grievances" that it reflects. My government fought
terrorism by not fighting it, and by trying to appease it. My government
insisted that I must coddle anti-Semites and terrorists, and must pander
to their agenda and desires, for there is no other choice.
My government over the past 12 years preached to me that it was my own
pride and my parochial patriotism that was the obstacle to peace. It told
me I must seek peace through self-debasement and self-humiliation. My
government told me that if I would show willingness to compromise, then so
would the Arabs.
My government has been wrong about everything, but refuses to admit it has
been wrong about anything.
My government decided that Palestinians are a "nation" and that chunks of
my Jewish lands were in fact "Palestinian lands". My government decided
that Arabs may freely live any place they wish anywhere in the land of
Israel, but I may not live freely where I might choose if it happens to be
across the "Green Line". My government instituted discrimination against
me and against other Jews in the name of "affirmative action", quotas and
preferences for Arabs and directed against me.
My government fought for my survival through cowardice and endless
"restraint", turning my other cheek against my will, pursuing endless
"goodwill gestures", which only enflamed the violence. It did so despite
the fact that I and my fellow Israeli citizens voted repeatedly to revoke
the "Oslo approach" and voted in favor of pursuing war against our
enemies, not appeasement. My government abandoned all of northern Israel
to the mercies of the Hizbollah rockets, now aimed at me in the thousands.
My government abandoned the Jewish towns near the Gaza Strip to rocket
barrages from the PLO.
I have spent the past 12 years cringing in shame. My government made me
feel that way. But I have NEVER felt as ashamed at being an Israeli as I
did this week, when my government decided to reward the Hizbollah for
murdering three of my fellow citizens in cold blood. My government also
abandoned Ron Arad, releasing his kidnapper, rewarding the terrorists who
kidnapped him, who "sold" him to Iran and possibly murdered him.
My government decided to release nearly 450 murderers with blood on their
hands in order to "buy" the release of the carcasses of three of my fellow
citizens who were murdered by the Hizbollah after they had been kidnapped
by it. My government had abandoned southern Lebanon to the Hizbollah and
assured me there would be complete tranquility thereafter. After the
farcical Israeli "withdrawal" ordered by my government, the Hizbollah has
fired almost daily into Israel, has sent in terrorists who murdered
Israeli civilians, and snatched the three soldiers (two Jews and one
Bedouin Arab) whose bodies were released this week, after murdering them
in cold blood.
Last week the Hizbollah murdered one more army officer working a
bulldozer; in response my government punished some empty Hizbollah
buildings. The prisoner "deal" was possible only because my government
refuses to execute the murdering savages, the terrorists. My government
thinks capital punishment is inhumane, and its absence has made possible
the murders of 1700 of my fellow countrymen. That is like twenty two
September 11ths, when measured proportional to population.
The Hizbollah also held as prisoner a man who had entered Lebanon for
criminal purposes, possibly a drug deal to pay off his gambling debts. I
opposed releasing any terrorists to get him released. I might have
considered agreeing to release a handful as payment to the Hizbollah to
keep him imprisoned there, if he is indeed a drug smuggler.
My government decided to respond to the murders of the three POWs by
rewarding their murderers, not by converting three Hizbollah towns into
large parking lots, not by bathing the Hizbollah leaders in napalm. My
government signalled to all my fellow citizens that it was unwilling to
avenge our deaths. My government let every Israeli soldier know that his
life would be worthless if captured by the enemy because my government
would always seek "deals" with those who murder POWs. My government made
it known that by grabbing some Israelis as hostages, anyone could obtain
any concession they want from my country. My government also let every
soldier know that, if captured in war, he would be abandoned to his fate
by my government. My government agreed to this "deal" with the Hizbollah,
a deal that spit on the family of missing Israeli airman Ron Arad. The man
who kidnapped and "sold" Arad has been released by my government as
payment for the release of the common criminal.
My government is trying to cover its shame by boasting that it "held out
tough" and refused to release the baby-murdering terrorist Samir Kuntar,
the man who murdered the members of the Haran family in Nahariya. My same
government boasts that it would have released this arch-murderer had the
Hizbollah so much as told Israel where Ron Arad (or his grave) is.
So much for "standing tough".
My government is a disgrace. My government practices cowardice and
pretends it is courage. My government displays indifference to the
Israelis who will now be murdered by those released terrorists and
murderers. My government had the gall to pretend it was acting out of
compassion and morality when it signed this capitulation, when it placed
that smirk on the face of the Hizbollah chief terrorist, boasting of his
victory. To drive home the point that the "deal" proves to the world that
the Jews are on the run, the terrorists blew up a bus in Jerusalem, the
same Jerusalem they pretend is holy to them, as part of celebrating the
stampede of Jewish flight. After all, the Hizbollah was being rewarded for
terror, so why should not the Palestinians follow their lead in obtaining
Israeli surrender?
The bus atrocity in Jerusalem was carried out by the "Al Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades," a PLO terror group under the direct command and control of
Yassir Arafat.
My government pretended it was suddenly acting out of Jewish ethical
values.
My government would not know a Jewish ethical value if it popped up in its
face. My government pretends there is a "Part B" to this capitulation, in
which information about Ron Arad will be released. I do not belive them. I
think my government is lying to window-dress this act of cowardice.
As I watch the victory smile on the mug of the Hizbollah Chief Terrorist,
my own government makes me cringe.
My government makes me ashamed of being an Israeli.
2. More Israelis, including Israeli "academics", promoting boycotts and
divestment:
http://www.al-awda.ca/print.php?sid=506&POSTNUKESID=9c0bbb95bf56e2dfa4bffa6dbbf22228
1.
The question you will be arrested for incitement in Israel if you ask:
Do you think that releasing by the Israeli government two years back of
over 400 terrorists and murderers, including the two who had "sold" Ron
Arad to Iran, in order to obtain the release of an abucted Israeli
criminal and the bodies fo three Israeli soldiers murdered in cold blood
by the Hezbollah, and the failure by Israel to avenge those 3 murders,
has anything to do with today's headline?:
Hezbollah kidnaps 2 IDF soldiers during clashes on Israel-Lebanon border
By Amos Harel, Jack Khoury and Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondents
Hezbollah kidnapped two Israel Defense Forces soldiers on the northern
border in the midst of massive shelling attacks on Israel's north
Wednesday morning. The IDF confirmed two of its soldiers were missing on
the Lebanese border, Channel 10 TV reported.
2. BBC story on the link between the ISM bombers of "Mike's Place" in Tel
Aviv and the 7/7 subway murderers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5161390.stm
3. What about the ARAB lobby?
http://maurice-ostroff.tripod.com/id11.html
4. From the JTA:
www.jta.org
Ya.alon: .Two states. no longer relevant
Israel must abandon the two-state paradigm when it comes to dealing with
the Palestinians, its former military chief said.
.The two-state paradigm is not relevant,. Moshe Ya.alon said Monday at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he has been a fellow
since leaving the military last year. .Israel should issue a new
paradigm..
Asked to elaborate, he said one scenario could involve a regional
arrangement among Israel, Jordan, the Palestinians and possibly Egypt. He
said the Hamas regime, Iran.s increased role and Palestinian instability
made Palestinian statehood unrealistic for now.
He said Israel should establish a .defensible-borders. policy, which would
include a heightened military presence in the West Bank and pressure on
the international community to recognize Israeli sovereignty in West Bank
areas close to Israeli population centers.
5. Animal nuts against the IDF:
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/737607.html
6. Why can't Israeli army officials ever wake up in time?
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=107042
Subject: Leftist Indoctrination Propaganda Course at the University of Haifa
Leftist Indoctrination Propaganda Course at the University of Haifa
By Steven Plaut
A few months back, I published a short news
item<http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=1032>concerning an
anti-Israel propaganda course at
Tel Aviv University, taught by an anti-Zionist leftist extremist named Uri
Hadar, in the psychology department. The course was entitled "The
Psychology of the Occupation." It was a "course" of naked indoctrination
into "anti-occupation" and anti-Zionist political ideology, all in the guise
of a serious course in psychology. At the time, instead of canceling what
was obviously a biased and indoctrinating course, the President of Tel Aviv
University Itamar Rabinovich wrote to the heads of the University of
Haifaand demanded that they take action
*against me* for the crime of revealing the existence of this propaganda
course at Tel Aviv University in the media. Rabinovich clearly is opposed
to free speech and democracy and favors leftist on-campus indoctrination. The
chiefs of Haifa University laughed him off. Rabinovich's letter was then
published by a foul-mouthed far-leftist spokesman at Tel Aviv
Universitynamed Danny Shapiro.
At that time, several people contacted me and asked me directly if I
would have exposed and condemned a similar course at the University of Haifa,
my own home campus. After all, it was one thing to bash someone
*else's*campus, but would I have the gumption to suggest that my own
campus heads be
contacted and lobbied,under similar circumstances?
Well, the answer is yes and here is the proof. I would like to invite
you all to take a moment to tell the heads of the University of Haifa what
you think of the following scandal.
The University of Haifa currently offers a propaganda indoctrination
course similar to that offered by psychology at Tel Aviv University. It is
in the Department of Sociology and is entitled "The Sociology of the
Occupation", number 204.1025 B01.. It is taught by an anti-Zionist
lecturer who is probably the Hamas' *second*-favorite lecturer at the
University of Haifa. Dr. Yuval Yonay is a close collaborator with Ilan
Pappe. He works intimately with
Pappe<http://www.hagada.org.il/hagada/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=985>,
including in promoting boycotts of
Israel<http://www.acpr.org.il/English-Nativ/07-issue/hornik-7.htm>and
"divestment".
He helped to organize<http://israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_advic&advice_id=100&page_data%5bid%5d=172&the_session_id=3c5d6c34a0d33ab8e0ef4b4f277430a4&cookie_lang=en&userid=3112>a
series of "Naqba Days" at the
University of Haifa with Pappe, in which Israelis were called upon to mourn
the creation and very existence of their own country as a "catastrophe"
(Naqba in Arabic).
Yonay is a cheerleader for
convicted<http://israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_advic&advice_id=2875&page_data%5bid%5d=176&the_session_id=3c5d6c34a0d33ab8e0ef4b4f277430a4&cookie_lang=en&userid=3112>nuclear
traitor Mordecai Vanunu, promotes
the Palestinian "right of
return,"<http://israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_advic&advice_id=126&page_data%5bid%5d=174&the_session_id=3c5d6c34a0d33ab8e0ef4b4f277430a4&cookie_lang=en&userid=3112>which
means their "right" to destroy Israel, and has been active in the
groups in Israel that organize
mutiny<http://www.seruv.org.il/UniversitySupportHeb_Print.asp>among
soldiers and refusal
to serve <http://www.notes.co.il/ben-hateva/14698.asp>. He has petitioned
to prevent<http://israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_advic&advice_id=546&page_data%5bid%5d=172&the_session_id=3c5d6c34a0d33ab8e0ef4b4f277430a4&cookie_lang=en&userid=3112>army
officers in Israel from speaking with high school students and is
active in both the anti-Israel pro-Hamas Gush
Shalom<http://www.gush-shalom.org/cgi-bin/petition.cgi?_conf=jerusalem&_op=view>organization
and the
Israeli communist
party<http://www.banki-shabiba.net/tur/_________________________-19.html>
.
Yonay is a sociologist with a special interest in what he calls "Queer
Studies." Yonay's academic work includes such groundbreaking articles as:
"A Queer Look at the Arab-Jewish Conflict." in *Theoria Uvikoret* 19:
265-75. (Hebrew), which is a hardcore Marxist magazine; "Between Silence
and Damnation: The Construction of Gay Identity in the Israeli Legal
Discourse, 1948-1988." in *Israeli Sociology *1(2): 257-93. (Hebrew); and
"The Law on Homosexual Orientation in Israel: Between History and
Sociology." in *Mishpat u Mimshal* 5(1): 531-86. (Hebrew). Yonay likes to
think of himself as a serious critic of economic theories, although I have
never met an economist who thinks Yonay understands the first thing about
economics. I happen to have a PhD in economics from Princeton myself and I
consider Yonay an economic illiterate.
The "Sociology of Occupation" course in question taught by Yonay has a
course outline or syllabus that can be viewed by Hebrew readers here:
http://hevra.haifa.ac.il/~soc/lecturers/yonay/1025.doc. For others, let me
summarize what it says. The course outline is crawling with postmodernist
Newspeak and gibberish, about conflicting "narratives" in the Middle
Eastand about "colonialism".
The course outline by Yonay makes little attempt to hide the fact that
Zionism will be represented in the course as a form of colonialism and
imperialism.
The course description contains the following caveat: "The course is
built on the presumption that a complete separation between science (sic)
and ideology is not possible, because ideological perceptions affect the way
in which facts are understood and gain relevance." Well, let us put aside
the question of whether sociology is even science. This course also
promises large doses of "New History", meaning historic revisionism, meaning
pseudo-history. New Historians generally think that facts never matter
especially when they stand in the way of destroying Israel.
Required course texts in Yonay's re-education camp include material by
Edward Said and assorted Marxists and anti-Zionists, as well as non-academic
leftist propaganda diatribes. Yonay, by the way, is very active in various
homosexual militant groups. He teaches a pro-homosexuality course in "queer
theory" (his term), whose syllabus - I am told by some students - is so
explicit that I could not post it here without fear of jeopardizing my "PG"
rating.
So, after all that, if you would like to tell the chiefs of the
University of Haifa what you think of Yonay's course on "Sociology of the
Occupation", please contact:
*President of the University of Haifa
Prof. Aaron Ben-Ze'ev
Fax:** 972-4-8240281
E-mail: abenzeev@univ.haifa.ac.il <abenzeev@univ.haifa.ac.il%20>*
*And*
*Rector of the **University of **Haifa
Prof. Yossi Ben-Artzi
Fax**: 972-4-8342101
Email:** **yossib@univ.haifa.ac.il* <yossib@univ.haifa.ac.il>
And
*Chairman of the Board of Govemors
Prof. Manfred Lahnstein
Fax: 972-4-8342104 *
1. Here is today's most important current events question: Was the ISM
or International Solidarity Movement involved in the London subway
bombings?
Why is that suddenly an importamnt current events question?
Well, as you know, the ISM collaborated with and hosted the two
terrorists who murdered three people and injured 50 when they blew up the
"Mike's Place" bar on the Tel Aviv waterfront on April 29, 2003. The two
terrorists had been hosted and wined and dined by the ISM before carrying
out the atrocity (see
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=769 and
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8371 and
http://www.terrorism.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=11894&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0)
Now the Times of London reports that those two terrorists who blew up
Mike's Place with the ISM's connivance also were tied to the group in the
UK that placed the bombs in the London subways
(See http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/london.bombing/ for report on those
bombings).
The British Islamofascist who organized the subway bombings in London
had ties to the two perps who blew up Tel Aviv and had earlier gone to the
Gaza Strip at the time of the terror attack in Tel Aviv.
SO did the bombers of London ALSO have ISM collaborators?
2. Dear Brethren, the War With Israel Is Over
BY YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
July 7, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/35606
As Israel enters the third week of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip
it voluntarily evacuated a few months ago, a sense of reality among Arabs
is spreading through commentary by Arab pundits, letters to the editor,
and political talk shows on Arabic-language TV networks.The new views are
stunning both in their maturity and in their realism. The best way I can
think of to convey them is in the form of a letter to the Palestinian
Arabs from their Arab friends:
Dear Palestinian Arab brethren:
The war with Israel is over.
You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your
children.
We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we
stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are
moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and
the "eternal struggle" with Israel.
Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to
fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in
1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn
is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10
years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.
At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a
state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part
of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is
running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and
sound advice, friends.
You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses
that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of
leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at
modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no
harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you.
You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction
and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your
government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are
all in ruins.
Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of
death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of
foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your
officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that
carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your
criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the
flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.
In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out
landscape that is shrinking by the day.
What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important,
what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the
fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots?
We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.
Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building
housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools,
and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel,
such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not
going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in
places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what
happens to you.
Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you
in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the
entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The
Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.
Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving,
leader of yours,Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods . more
pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives . while
your children played in the sewers of Gaza.
The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?
3. Telling the truth has become an offense which is unprotected by free
speech doctrines, which instead protect the telling of lies.
--Phyllis Chesler in "Truth on Trial"
4. Ten-Year Anniversary Reprint: The Assault on Israeli Democracy (from
1996): http://www.afsi.org/OUTPOST/96FEB/feb4.htm
5. Get yours today:
http://stores.politees.net/Detail.bok?no=1
6. Palestinian Darwin Award:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21426_Palestinian_Darwin_Award_Winner&only
1. For those confused about freedom of speech in Israel, we think we can
clarify things for you. Demanding that terrorists kidnap Israelis is
free speech. Criticism those same people who demand that terrorists
kidnap and murder Israelis, however, would be "slander!
ARAB MK ADMITS: I ADVISED PA TO KIDNAP SOLDIER
Knesset Member Wasal Taha, corresponding publicly with internet surfers on
the Arabic-language IslamOnline site, said he repeatedly advised PA
terrorists to battle and kidnap Israeli soldiers.
MK Zevulun Orlev (National Religious Party), who last week submitted a
bill to negate Knesset membership to MKs who support terrorists, said that
Taha's "traitorous" remarks are further proof that Israeli democracy must
protect itself.
According to a report in Maariv newspaper today, Taha told surfers on
Thursday that he repeatedly advised the PA Arabs to stop shooting and
targeting civilians, and to concentrate on IDF targets. An English
translation of Maariv's Hebrew translation of Taha's Arabic words:
"We told them more than once that the Palestinians, who are subjected to
murder and ongoing crimes on the part of the Israeli army, have two
options: One is to explode and kill civilians - and these are much easier
operations. The second option is the military option, in the framework of
which a military unit from the resistance [i.e., terrorist infrastructures
- ed.] is established in order to break into a military camp, clash with
the soldiers and battle them and take them and the conquest into
captivity."
Taha also had words of advice for the PA on the publicity front, saying
that the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit should not be called "kidnapped"
but rather "imprisoned" or "captive." Taha said, "Kidnapping is an act
carried out by gangs, terrorists, and the like. But 'captive' means that
[it is carried out by] an organized, legitimate group that makes
decisions. Israel is trying to present our resistance as something less -
as terrorism, murder, and kidnapping - in order that the diplomatic circle
will be closed to it."
Arutz-7's Uzi Baruch spoke with Taha's aide, who said that Taha's words
had been taken out of context. She then repeated over Taha's words as
they appeared in Maariv, and added, "I don't tell and won't tell the
Palestinian Authority and the organizations how to act."
Asked if MK Taha condemns the abduction of Corp. Gilad Shalit, his aide
said, "We do not condemn actions against IDF soldiers, we condemn actions
only against innocent civilians."
MK Orlev responded today, "The traitorous words of MK Taha prove that
Trojan horses have invaded the Knesset, and the democracy must protect
itself from them. Taha brags about his collaboration with the enemy and
shows that the instructions for the kidnapping did not emanate only from
Khaled Meshaal in Syria."
"Taha must be tried for treason," Orlev added.
2.
Gideon Levy is essentially the Ilan Pappe of Israeli journalism. He is
arguably the most openly anti-Israel journalist in Israeli media. He
devotes a column every week to moaning about Palestinians injured when
Israel shoots back, but has never had a word to say about Jews murdered
and maimed by terrorists. He is a regular columnist in some of the most
opely anti-Semitic web magazines on earth, including the pro-Hamas
pro-terror "Counterpunch", published by anti-Semite Alexander Cockburn
(who claims Jews were behind the 9-11 attacks on the US and also the
anthrax attacks).
In today's column in Haaretz, Levy devotes his crayon to justifying Kassam
attacks on Israel by the Palestinians and kidnappings of Israelis. It's
theme is that even though Israel has completely evacuated the Gaza Strip,
Israel is still oppressing the poor Palestinians there and so when the
Palestinians fire rockets into Sderot and Ashkelon, this is a justified
and moral response to Israel's continued occupation of Gaza.
Here are some snippets:
"Israel is causing electricity blackouts, laying sieges, bombing and
shelling, assassinating and imprisoning, killing and wounding civilians,
including children and babies, in horrifying numbers, but "they started."
"Israel left Gaza only partially, and in a distorted manner. The
disengagement plan, which was labeled with fancy titles like "partition"
and "an end to the occupation," did result in the dismantling of
settlements and the Israel Defense Forces' departure from Gaza, but it did
almost nothing to change the living conditions for the residents of the
Strip. Gaza is still a prison and its inhabitants are still doomed to live
in poverty and oppression. Israel closes them off from the sea, the air
and land, except for a limited safety valve at the Rafah crossing. They
cannot visit their relatives in the West Bank or look for work in Israel,
upon which the Gazan economy has been dependent for some 40 years.
Sometimes goods can be transported, sometimes not. Gaza has no chance of
escaping its poverty under these conditions. Nobody will invest in it,
nobody can develop it, nobody can feel free in it. Israel left the cage,
threw away the keys and left the residents to their bitter fate. Now, less
than a year after the disengagement, it is going back, with violence and
force. What could otherwise have been expected? That Israel would
unilaterally withdraw, brutally and outrageously ignoring the Palestinians
and their needs, and that they would silently bear their bitter fate and
would not continue to fight for their liberty, livelihood and dignity? We
promised a safe passage to the West Bank and didn't keep the promise. We
promised to free prisoners and didn't keep the promise."
His full piece is here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/736009.html
It certainly would not surprise me if Levy's next column were about how
the Jews are illegally occupying Iraq and how they illegally occupied
Germany before 1939.
3. The Un-Educatable Left:
http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=6358
4. Take out the Champagne!
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2006/07/05/antiwarcom-contributor-killed-in-iraq/
5. News:
**Archaeologists have discovered a network of underground chambers and
tunnels where Jews prepared for a revolt against the Romans in A.D.
(C.E.) 66-70. The find was made at the Israeli village of Kfar Kana,
north of Nazareth. According to archaeologists, the underground rooms,
connected by tunnels, were built directly beneath above-ground homes in
order to provide access to supplies and a place to hide from the Romans.
One of the rooms still contained eleven storage jars. The elaborate
preparation is being offered as proof that contrary to the conventional
wisdom that holds the revolt to have been spontaneous, it was
well-planned. The original village under which the rooms and tunnels
were built . also a new discovery -- dates back to the 10th and 9th
centuries B.C. (B.C.E.).**
6. Someone prepared a nice expose on Chamishism at:
http://www.britam.org/Questions/QuesChamish.html
7. Great piece:
http://www.ilanamercer.com/HarvardHucksters.htm
Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians
Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of .The Israeli Lobby and U.S.
Foreign Policy,. have been touted by some in the press as .two of
America's top scholars.. The academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government and his co-author of the University of Chicago may occupy
prized perches, but that doesn.t make them scholars.
However you slice it, the half-baked folderol that is .The Israeli Lobby.
isn.t .scholarship.. Scholarship appeals to evidence and reason. Theirs is
a randomly yoked together bit of pamphleteering in the postmodern
tradition.its authors don.t reason or argue. Instead, they propagandize,
promoting as axiomatic a belief in the superiority of certain moral or
political positions, one of which is the idea of Israel.s foul founding.
A scholar, moreover, builds his case. These two declare their case open
and shut on page two of the screed. .Readers may reject our conclusions,.
they grandiosely state, .but the evidence on which they rest is not
controversial..
The logically invalid argument from authority undergirds .The Israeli
Lobby..and in particular, our authors. assertion that the facts they
present .are not in serious dispute among scholars,. because these rely
.heavily on the work of Israeli scholars and journalists..
Jews.Israelis included.are leaders of the new anti-Semitism, which
consists in the demonization of Israelis (often described as Nazis
vis-.-vis the Palestinians) and the delegitimization of the Jewish State.
Blaming Israel or the Israeli lobby for America.s foreign policy blunders,
and alleging that Israel was founded through systematic ethnic cleansing
and land theft are the centerpieces of their campaign.
Because a Jew.Israeli or other.has espoused these positions against
Israel, Harvard.s Tweedledumb and UChicago.s Tweedledumber would like
their readers to believe that they must be true. The Capos of the
concentration camps were Jews; did their Jewishness make their
depredations against their own people correct or commendable?
While our .scholars. both demonize and delegitimize Israel, they are mere
dwarfs standing on the shoulders of Jewish giants. Noam Chomsky, .The
Godfather,. Steven and Hillary Rose, Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel, Tanya
Reinhart in Tel Aviv, and Michael Cohen in Swansea.these are but a few of
the new anti-Semitism.s leading Jewish lights.
The real rock stars of the Israeli intelligentsia.Israel.s own Ward
Churchills.are the pretentiously self-styled .New Historians.. This is a
group of popular far-left fabricators (one of whom facetiously boasted:
.We perform at weddings and bar mitzvas.), who.ve cocked a snook at the
liberal country in which they.ve thrived, so as to gain admittance into
the fashionable Palestinian pantheon.
They claim "Zionist imperialists" cheated Palestinian peasants out of
their land (which was, in fact, bought fairly and legally), and that these
interlopers conducted a systematic and deliberate policy of ethnic
cleansing with respect to the .indigenous population.. (There undoubtedly
have been sporadic acts of aggression and even terror against Palestinian
Arabs by Jews during the War of Independence. But there is simply no
historical evidence that they have been the result of a concerted or
systematic campaign.)
The .New Historians.. rendition is fast becoming the received wisdom on
Israel.s history in the court of public opinion. This historical revision
of Israel.s birth, incidentally, resembles the way the Left has distorted
and reduced America.s history to a narrative of the oppressed and the
excluded. As Efraim Karsh, Professor of Mediterranean Studies at the
University of London, has noted, .Partisan rewriting of history has
apparently become the accepted norm in those fields of research dealing
with highly contentious political, social, and historical phenomena, such
as the Arab-Israeli conflict..
The Harvard philippic defers to the .New Historians.. most flamboyant and
fishy associate, Benny Morris. In fact, it was Morris.s bowdlerization of
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.s words that first prompted Karsh to
investigate the fraud perpetrated by these hip historians, and expose it
in his masterful book, .Fabricating Israeli History: The .New
Historians...
While perusing the English-language version of Morris. doctored-to-death
book, .The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,. Karsh happened upon
a quote from a letter Ben-Gurion wrote to his son, allegedly stating that,
.we must expel the Arabs and take their places.. Karsh .recalled the
letter saying something quite different.. On examination, it transpired
that the Hebrew text read as follows: .We do not wish, we do not need to
expel Arabs and take their place . All our aspiration is built on the
assumption that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the
Arabs..
Initially Karsh, a gentleman and a scholar, read Morris charitably,
attributing the mangled citation to an innocent mistranslation or typo.
Still, to allay his worst fears, he proceeded to plumb all primary
source-material Morris used to shore-up his allegations.
Parroted by Walt and Mearsheimer, Morris has charged that the .Zionists.
systematically .drove Palestinians into exile,. and .that the Zionist and
Israeli establishments have systematically falsified archival source
material to conceal the Jewish state's less-than-immaculate conception..
It turns out Morris was projecting. For, as an incredulous Karsh
discovered, .Morris not only fails to show rewriting by [the Israeli
founding fathers], but he himself is the one who systematically falsifies
evidence..
Indeed, .there is scarcely a document that he does not twist.. As Karsh
demonstrates in detail, Morris and his cohorts have .violated every tenet
of bona fide research.: they misrepresent documents, resort to partial
quotes, withhold evidence, make false assertions, and rewrites original
documents. Such is the incompetence of these Arabists that they even
neglect Arab archival material, relying almost exclusively on
Western.often only secondary.sources.
.Through documentary manipulation,. observes Karsh, the Israeli .scholars.
(lauded by Walt and Mearsheimer) have turned .Israeli history on its
head..
Although Karsh has been attacked personally and stigmatized, the
blistering, textual bitch-slap he dealt these charlatans remains
unassailable. A dejected Morris even wrote to the Times Literary
Supplement to admit that .Karsh has a point. My treatment of transfer
thinking before 1948 was, indeed, superficial..
The Arab-Israeli debate, however, doesn.t hinge on the .professional and
intellectual integrity. of the interlocutors. Irrespective of whether they
are true or false, certain positions in contemporary Middle-Eastern
Studies and history departments are automatically deemed virtuous, and
veracity be damned. Their proponents are published in prestigious journals
and by distinguished publishing houses and become media darlings.
Popularity, fashion, and the booming .bash-Israel business. account for
the .new historians.. tenure, not scholarship. Ditto the Harvard hucksters
who promote them.
2006 By Ilana Mercer
8. In the latest assault on freedom of speech in Israel, it is becoming
risky to say "We told you so!" Ever since the start of the Oslo
"process", opponents of Oslo have illustrated 20-20 foresight and
predicted exactly why the "process" would fail and would only aggravate
terrorism and Arab aggression against Israel. And after each failure of
the Israeli government when it implemented the Left's Oslo strategy,
meaning governments both led by the Labor Party and the Likud,
opponents would say "We told you so." That enraged the Left. In
post-survivalship Israel, one must never point out that the Left's agenda
and strategy have failed. One must never point out how many times the
Left has been wrong. (How many times was it? Well, it was EVERY time
about EVERYTHING!)
After the initial implementations of Oslo by Rabin and Peres produced the
suicide bombers on buses and in cafes, some people dared to say "We told
you so!" The Left responded with demands that these people be indicted
for "incitement". "Inciting against Rabin's agenda" became a new
and original basis for investigation and legal harassment.
Now, with rockets hitting schools in Ashkelon and Sderot converted into
the Israeli Guernica, all thanks to the mind-numbingly stupid
"disengagement" from Gaza last summer, many of the opponents of Israeli
Self-Annihilation are saying "We told you so!". In fact, a large ad was
put in Haaretz a few days back by some members of Professors for a Strong
Israel.
That has outraged the Left. The Israeli media are now filled with Op-Eds
denoucning anyone for having been correct about the Gaza "disengagement"
and demanding that people now saying "We told you so" be silenced.
1. More on Israelis for a Hamas Victory:
http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=720
and
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3271269,00.html
2. French Court Dismisses Malicious SLAPP "Libel" Suit against Jewish
Philosopher:
PARIS (EJP)--- French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut has been
discharged by a Paris court after being sued by an Israeli film director
whom he described as "one of the current actors of Jewish anti-Semitism".
Interviewed in 2003 on the French Jewish radio RJC about Eyal Sivan's
film, "Route 181, fragments d'un voyage en Palestine-Israel" (Road 181,
Extracts from a Palestinian-Israeli journey), which was broadcast on a TV
station, Finkielkraut called the film maker "one of the actors of today's
particularly hard and frightening Jewish anti-Semitism".
The philosopher criticised Sivan for having made a link between the
Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and the Holocaust.
"But those who are sewing a Star of David on our chest want to claim the
yellow star for themselves," Finkielkraut said at the time.
Eyal Sivan, a leftwing militant, decided to sue Finkielkraut for his
"slanderous words which constitute an infringement to my honour and
consideration".
In the past, Eyal Sivan has supported actively the boycott of Israeli
products in order to denounce Israeli policies towards the Palestinians.
Israeli professor and former ambassador to France Eli Barnavi testified in
court for Alain Finkielkraut while two other Israeli professors, among
them Haim Bresheeth, testified in favour of Sivan.
Film maker Eyal Sivan
Critical analysis
Finkielkraut, who also received the support of Claude Lanzmann, director
of the famous film "Shoah", said that he reacted to the "violent
unilateral character" of Sivan's movie which represents the history of
Israeli-Palestinian relations "as the aggression of one people crazed by
the Shoah against a profoundly peaceful people."
"I don't know why this man is indignant about being called anti-Semitic,
that's what he is," Lanzmann said when he testified in favour of
FInkielkraut.
Sivan's "Road 81" film was distributed in small independent Paris
theatres.
The film maker accused Finkielkraut of being one of those people "ready to
fight against the last Israeli citizen, including myself, to preserve the
state of Israel". "This is not my position," he added.
The court rejected Sivan's complaint.
"Finkielkraut only credited the other side with intellectual attitudes and
never attributed a precise fact which could be proved," the presiding
judge, Nicolas Bonnal, said.
"Above all he gave a critical analysis of Sivan's work and of its
political positions," he added.
Sivan told EJP he was surprised by the ruling.
"It is clear to me that I was the victim of defamation," he stressed.
"This has nothing to do with a simple opinion debate."
In another case, Finkielkraut has been sued and accused of libel by French
anti-racist association MRAP (Movement Against Racism and for Friendship
Among Peoples) for comments made during a conference in 2003 on
''Anti-Semitism: the Left against itself''.
In a reference to the failure of the Durban conference on racism in 2001,
Finkielkraut said: "a movement was created in Durban against racism and
for popular anti-Semitism".
Comments about French identity
MRAP's president Mouloud Aounit, took it as a personal attack and accused
Finkielkraut of hinting that MRAP was anti-Semitic. A public prosecutor
representative has asked for Finkielkraut's discharge. The decision will
be made shortly.
Finkielkraut, who is one of France's most notable French intellectuals
along with two other Jews, Bernard-Henri Levy and Andr Glucksmann, already
made headlines at the end of last year when he had to apologize for
comments about the riots which took place around France in an interview
with Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
In the interview, Finkielkraut underlined that many immigrant do not
identify with France.
"If immigrants say 'the French' when they are referring to the whites,
then we are lost. If their identity is located somewhere else and they're
only in France for utilitarian reasons, then we're lost.
"I have to admit that the Jews are also starting to use this France. I say
to them, 'if for your France is a utilitarian matter, but your identity is
Judaism, then be honest with yourself: you have Israel."
Some of Finkielkraut's answers were translated to French and published in
the national newspaper Le Monde before they grew into a general
controversy and condemnation of Finkielkraut, who was accused of racism.
From left to right
Considered as a free-speaker in politically-correct France, Alain
Finkielkraut has been described by some as one of the leading
"neo-reactionary" figures along with interior minister and presidential
candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy.
Finkielkraut started his career as a militant of the left but drifted
through the years to the right, making many enemies on the way.
In 2005 he strongly defended a petition against anti-white racism in
French suburbs. Controversial French comic Dieudonne told EJP Finkielkraut
was "one of his main enemies."
The philosopher claims he is being harassed by his opponents with repeated
lawsuits but other intellectuals accuse him in private of provoking
controversies in order to get publicity and sell more books.
Finkielkraut has a weekly show on national French radio and on the Jewish
radio RCJ.
Afterword: Had Sivan been allowed to forum shop the suit into Nazareth
Court, Finkelkraut would have been found guilty of "slander", as would
Deborah Lipstadt. David Irving however would have been awarded a large
cash award in damages.
3. Campus Delusions on Diversity:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23235
4. Tough - Redux:
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18774/The_Only_Answer_Israel_Needs_To_Give%3A_%27Tough%21%27.html
5. From the Jewish Press, July 5, 06:
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18772/Letters_To_The_Editor.html
Judicial Outrage
I was speechless after reading Allyson Rowen Taylor.s superb article
(.Plaut Verdict A Symptom Of Israel.s Sick Judiciary,. op-ed, June 30)
about an Arab judge in Israel endorsing Holocaust denial while ruling that
treason is protected speech but criticism of treason constitutes
.slander..
This matter cannot be allowed to stand. I invite all Jewish Press
readers to take a few moments to act. First, please write the Israeli
minister of justice and demand that this judge be removed at once from the
bench. Letters should be sent to Haim Ramon, Minister of Justice, Ministry
of Justice, Salah-a-Din 29 P.O.Box 49029 Jerusalem 91490 (Fax:
972-2-6466357)
And please write the new president of Ben Gurion University, Professor
Rivka Carmi, at Ben Gurion University, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105
Israel (e-mail: rcarmi@bgumail.bgu.ac.il.) Tell her that Ben Gurion
University will not be receiving a dime in support from us and our
communities as long as extremists like Neve Gordon serve as members of the
faculty, and that we will be advising parents not to send their children
to Ben Gurion University until this outrage is redressed.
Don Levine
Passaic, NJ and Holon, Israel
6. Ivory Tower Fascism:
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18779/Ivory_Tower_Fascists%3A_%3Ci%3EAcademic_Boycotters_Follow_In_Hitler%27s_Footsteps%3C%2Fi%3E.html
1. http://www.jewishmediaresources.com/article/974/
The Enemy Within
by Jonathan Rosenblum
Yated Ne'eman
June 26, 2006
Long ago the prophet Yeshaya warned, "Your ruiners and destroyers will
come from amongst you" (49:17). It is doubtful whether that the truth of
those words has ever been more evident than today.
Last week the leaders of the Presbyterian Church, meeting in Birmingham,
Alabama, engaged in three days of searching debate over whether to rescind
a 2004 resolution calling for divestment from Israel. Similar resolutions
have been passed in recent years by the Anglican Church of England and the
American Episcopalian Church.
Divestment resolutions are of immense propaganda value because they embed
in the public mind a connection between Israel and the former apartheid
regime of South Africa, against which divestment was pursued with great
effect. Fear of being labeled an apartheid regime . with a minority of
Jews ruling over a majority Arab population . was a major impetus behind
Ariel Sharon.s decision to withdraw from Gaza.
Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein was one of two representatives of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Birmingham lobbying for rescission. He had expected a
large Palestinian presence there as well, given the importance of the
issue.
The Palestinians, however, were largely absent. They were not needed. In
their place were dozens of Jews lobbying in favor of retaining the
divestment resolution: Tikkun, Machsom Watch (the organization in which
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.s daughter Dana is active), Jewish Voice for
Peace. Norman Finkelstein, who has been dubbed the Jewish David Irving,
and whose book The Holocaust Industry was called by a New York Times
reviewer a new variation on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was there
as well, generously offering his latest screed against Israel to every
delegate.
Dr. Yehuda Pearl, father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel
Pearl, who identifies himself as a man of the Left, was stunned by the
vitriol heaped on Israel by these Jews. His voice quivering with passion,
he asked them: If you consider Israel.s behavior too harsh, why don.t you
go to Israel and demonstrate at IDF headquarters, where you might have
some effect. But the only beneficiaries of retaining the divestment
resolution here will be those who killed my son.
Fortunately, the Jewish haters of Israel did not prevail. A new resolution
passed, which not only apologized to the Jewish community for the hurt
caused by the earlier resolution and termed the process by which it was
adopted deeply flawed, but removed any mention of divestment. (To be sure
the new resolution was far from perfect; it called for Israel to dismantle
the security fence beyond the 1967 borders, which it called Palestinian
land.)
THE LEAD ROLE PLAYED BY JEWS in the attack on Israel was part of a larger
pattern. The various resolutions in favor of an academic boycott of
Israeli universities and academics passed in recent years by British
academic unions were, in large part, the brainchild of Haifa University
Professor Ilan Pappe, and its main proponents in England were Jewish
professors Stephen and Jacquelyn Rose.
When the Ontario branch of Canada.s largest union voted recently to
boycott Israel, it was privileged to receive a letter of support from 25
Israeli academics, most of them currently teaching at Israeli academic
institutions, expressing their support for "your courageous initiative and
fervent hope that it will set an example for many others to follow."
The Western press feels little need to check itself when reporting from
Israel because it can always find support for any charges it makes, no
matter how preposterous, in the Israeli media itself. At international
conferences to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Israeli
"representatives" . usually someone like Gideon Levy or Amira Hass from
Haaretz . consistently outdo their Palestinian counterparts in their
condemnations of Israel.
Among the major sources for the notorious paper by Harvard Professor
Stephen Walt and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer, in
which they charged that American foreign policy had been kidnapped by the
"Israel Lobby" were Israeli journalists and academics. What Israeli Jews
say about Israel is perceived as carrying special force, no matter how
unsupported, because surely no Jew or Israeli would say anything bad about
Israel unless it were true.
Ha.aretz publisher Amos Schocken does not lag far behind his star
reporters. After the Knesset passed a law denying residency to
Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens . i.e., to citizens of a
quasi-state at open war with Israel . he wrote in Ha.aretz that Israel had
shown itself to be an "apartheid state," that has no interest in peace
with its neighbors.
Nor do the intemperate attacks on Israel come exclusively from academics
and fringe figures. Avraham Burg, former chairman of the Jewish Agency,
Speaker of the Knesset, and Chairman of the Labor Party, published a piece
in 2003 in numerous international papers, in which he placed the entire
onus on Israel for the failure to achieve peace. He mentioned Palestinian
suicide bombers only to express his understanding: "Having ceased to care
about the children of the Palestinians, [Israel] should not be surprised
when they come full of hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of
Israeli escapism."
After Yasir Arafat turned down a Palestinian state at Camp David and
launched a new intifada against Israeli, Israel Prize winner and former
Education Minister Shulamit Aloni, wrote an article in Le Monde in which
she had not one word of criticism for the Palestinians and not one good
word to say about Israel.
EVEN AMONG ISRAEL-HATING ISRAELI ACADEMICS, Ben-Gurion University lecturer
Neve Gordon deserves mention. At a time when Yasir Arafat was offering a
safe haven in his Ramallah compound to the murderers of Minister Rehavam
Ze.evi, Gordon violated an army order and entered the compound to serve as
a human shield for Arafat, along with 250 members of the infamous
International Solidarity Movement. Once there he was photographed holding
hands triumphantly aloft with Arafat, and telling journalists that charges
of Arafat.s involvement in terrorism against Israel were Israeli
propaganda.
Gordon is a frequent critic of Israel.s "fascism" and "state terror." And
he once wrote a letter to Ha.aretz justifying Palestinian terrorism
against Israeli civilians as the only language that Israel and Ehud Barak
understand.
Gordon has led a campaign falsely accusing his former army commander, Gaza
Brigade Commander Gen. Aviv Kochavi, of "war crimes." As a consequence,
Kochavi was warned by the IDF not to take up advanced studies at the Royal
College of Defense Studies in England, out of fear of a "war crimes"
prosecution. Gordon formerly headed an organization called Physicians for
Human Rights (though he is not a doctor), whose website carries cartoons
of Israelis oppressing Palestinians, which Bar-Ilan University.s Gerald
Steinberg writes, can only be characterized as "anti-Semitic."
Finally, Gordon is an ardent supporter of the aforementioned Norman
Finkelstein, whose works he views as in the finest tradition of the
Biblical prophets, afra l.puma. Gordon.s laudatory reviews of
Finkelstein.s book The Holocaust Industry are carried on various neo-Nazi
and Islamist sites, including that of Ernst Zundel, who was deported from
Canada to stand trial in Germany for Holocaust denial. In that book,
Finkelstein argues that the numbers of those killed in the Holocaust are
grossly exaggerated, as part of a systematic manipulation by world Jewry
to deflect criticism of Israel.s "racist" and "Nazi" treatment of
Palestinians.
Gordon stands for the proposition that as far as the Israeli legal system
in concerned there is no such thing as traitorous speech. On the other
hand, calling such speech by its name may be libelous. While Gordon does
not exactly restrain his tongue or his pen, he would prefer others to
restrain theirs when speaking about him. Thus he slapped a libel suit on
Haifa University economics professor Steven Plaut, for whom Israeli.s
anti-Israel academics are something of a pet peeve and who devotes much
time to exposing and ridiculing their antics.
Gordon chose the venue for his libel suit with care. Even though he lives
in Jerusalem, and Plaut in Haifa, he sued in Nazareth, where he had the
best chance of drawing an Arab judge. His strategy was a reprise of that
used by Southerners at the height of the American civil rights movement in
the .60s to bankrupt the civil rights organizations and their leaders with
a series libel suits tried before red-neck Southern juries in places like
Alabama.
The United States Supreme Court put an end to the practice in the 1964
case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which made it virtually impossible
for a public figure to sue for libel absent a showing of reckless
disregard for the truth. That expressions of opinion were beyond the reach
of libel law did not even need stating.
Unfortunately, Israel.s protections of free speech lag considerably behind
those of the United States. Nazareth proved to be Gordon.s Alabama; he
drew the Arab judge he sought. And she did not disappoint. She socked
Professor Plaut with an 80,000 shekel judgment plus 15,000 shekels in
court costs.
The decision bordered on the unbelievable. Part of the judgment was based
on a satirical e-mail sent to Gordon consoling him on the death in a
targeted killing of Hamas. leading bomb maker. Plaut denied that he had
written the e-mail, and testified that he had done nothing more than
forward it to his e-mail list. There was no evidence to the contrary.
Nevertheless the satiric joke . a clear expression of opinion -- was
deemed libelous.
Judge Reem Nadaff also found a posting by Plaut where he described
Gordon.s scholarly publications as paltry to be libelous. Yet that
description was unquestionably true at the time made. (That it is no
longer true is more a testament to the standards of left-wing scholarly
journals than to Gordon.s scholarship.) Judge Nadaff nevertheless entered
judgment against Plaut for failing to remove the offending articles from
various websites later, when the description no longer applied . a novel
doctrine.
Most of Nadaff.s opinion focused on discussion of two headlines of
articles written by Plaut. She emphasized the particular power packed by a
headline, even though neither of the headlines in question . "Haaretz
promotes Jews for Hitler" and "Judenrat for Peace" . even mentioned Gordon
by name.
In the first article Plaut blasted Ha.aretz for picking Gordon to review
Norman Finkelstein.s The Holocaust Industry and then printing his
laudatory review. Plaut denied even writing the headline in question,
which he said was composed by an editor. In any event, "the Jews for
Hitler" being promoted by Ha.aretz obviously referred to Finkelstein,
whose book Ha.aretz was criticized for reviewing favorably. Contrary to
what Judge Nadaff wrote, the plural "Jews" did not necessarily include
Gordon. Plaut mentioned some other lovely Jews in the piece, including
Noam Chomsky and the editors of Tikkun magazine. Moreover, the most
reasonable understanding of the headline is that "Jews for Hitler" is a
metaphoric club of which Finkelstein is the prime example.
Along the way, Judge Nadaff wrote a mini-essay on how discussion of the
Holocaust is taboo in Israel and anyone who questions the received
orthodoxy is subjected to vicious condemnation. She seemed to view it as
her duty to defend forms of Holocaust denial in Israel by hitting those
who express contempt for the deniers with libel judgments.
"Judenrat for Peace" savaged Gordon for his visit to Arafat.s Ramallah
compound. Nadaff read the title as a literal statement that Gordon . who
was not mentioned by name in the title . was a collaborator with Hitler in
his plans to destroy the Jewish people. Yet Plaut was clearly 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. While
that may not dovetail with Judge Nadaff.s estimate of Arafat, evidence of
his role in financing in directing terror attacks against Israeli Jews
right up until his death is hardly in short supply.
Judge Nadaff basically created a new rule -- Holocaust metaphors are
beyond the pale . ignoring in the process plenty of Israeli case law to
the contrary, as well as much case law to the effect that public figures,
like Gordon, must expect to be subject to the harshest criticism.
The only consolation in Judge Nadaff.s astounding opinion is the
revelation that not all the "destroyers" come for within.
2. Quote of the day: "I wish 10 months ago they had hit a strategic
facility -then we would not be in this mess"
Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 2 July 2006
"I wish 10 months ago they [AL: the Palestinians] had hit a strategic
facility in Ashkelon - then we would have taken action and we would not be
in this mess today."
Former commander of Israel's Southern Command, reserve Maj. Gen. Yom-Tov
Samia, commenting on the situation in the Gaza Strip today in a live
interview broadcast on Israel Radio this morning
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@...
Website: http://www.imra.org.il
3. http://www.torontosun.com/Comment/Commentary/2006/06/29/pf-
1659181.html
EDITORIAL: It's time to stand with Israel
4. Calling a Treasonous Spade a Spade:
http://www.politicsislocal.com/artman/publish/article_462.shtml