Steven Plaut |
Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university. |
Thursday, December 31, 2009
THIS BLOG HAS MOVED TO http://www.zioncon.blogspot.com
The Left is Having Conniptions over Being Monitored and Exposed: http://counterpunch.com/makdisi10182007.html "Academic colleagues, get used to it," warned the pro-Israel activist Martin Kramer in March 2004. "Yes, you are being watched. Those obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the Internet, and they will be harvested. Your syllabi, which you've also posted, will be scrutinized. Your Web sites will be visited late at night." Thursday, December 31, 2009Save the baby Polar Bears! Build more Israeli Settlements!HELP ME!! HELP ME!!! Well, the Copenhagen conference was over just a few days ago but now it turns out that there is a horrendous anti-environmental aspect of Obama's policies that is contributing to global warming and energy inefficiency. I am referring to Obama's demand that Israel end all construction activities in the West Bank, accepted under bullying by the Netanyahu gang. You see, as part of the "freeze" of those "settlements," a number of projects for installation of solar panels that generate renewable energy cleanly from solar energy are blocked. The Knesset this week discussed this anti-environmental initiative of the Obama Administration following a question raised by Knesset Member Uri Orbach. The weather in Israel makes generating electricity by means of solar panels popular. EMPOWER SETTLERS (with Solar Power!) But now, alas, freezing settlements threatens the wellbeing of the entire planet, destroying the polar icecaps, killing coral reefs, and drowning polar bears! The solution? Build more settlements!
1. Auld Lang Zion
2. Wall Street Journal: Israel's Right in the 'Disputed' Territories By DANNY AYALON The recent statements by the European Union's new foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton criticizing Israel have once again brought international attention to Jerusalem and the settlements. However, little appears to be truly understood about Israel's rights to what are generally called the "occupied territories" but what really are "disputed territories." That's because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered "occupied" in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel's conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years. The name "West Bank" was first used in 1950 by the Jordanians when they annexed the land to differentiate it from the rest of the country, which is on the east bank of the river Jordan. The boundaries of this territory were set only one year before during the armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan that ended the war that began in 1948 when five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish State. It was at Jordan's insistence that the 1949 armistice line became not a recognized international border but only a line separating armies. The Armistice Agreement specifically stated: "No provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations." (Italics added.) This boundary became the famous "Green Line," so named because the military officials during the armistice talks used a green pen to draw the line on the map. After the Six Day War, when once again Arab armies sought to destroy Israel and the Jewish state subsequently captured the West Bank and other territory, the United Nations sought to create an enduring solution to the conflict. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 is probably one of the most misunderstood documents in the international arena. While many, especially the Palestinians, push the idea that the document demands that Israel return everything captured over the Green Line, nothing could be further from the truth. The resolution calls for "peace within secure and recognized boundaries," but nowhere does it mention where those boundaries should be. It is best to understand the intentions of the drafters of the resolution before considering other interpretations. Eugene V. Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in 1967 and a drafter of the resolution, stated in 1990: "Security Council Resolution 242 and (subsequent U.N. Security Council Resolution) 338... rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to "secure and recognized borders," which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 194." Lord Caradon, the British U.N. Ambassador at the time and the resolution's main drafter who introduced it to the Council, said in 1974 unequivocally that, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial." The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, made the issue even clearer when he stated in 1973 that, "the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal." This would encompass "less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territory, inasmuch as Israel's prior frontiers had proven to be notably insecure." Even the Soviet delegate to the U.N., Vasily Kuznetsov, who fought against the final text, conceded that the resolution gave Israel the right to "withdraw its forces only to those lines it considers appropriate." After the war in 1967, when Jews started returning to their historic heartland in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as the territory had been known around the world for 2,000 years until the Jordanians renamed it, the issue of settlements arose. However, Rostow found no legal impediment to Jewish settlement in these territories. He maintained that the original British Mandate of Palestine still applies to the West Bank. He said "the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors." There is no internationally binding document pertaining to this territory that has nullified this right of Jewish settlement since. And yet, there is this perception that Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it. Not only is this morally and factually incorrect, but the more this narrative is being accepted, the less likely the Palestinians feel the need to come to the negotiating table. Statements like those of Lady Ashton's are not only incorrect; they push a negotiated solution further away. Mr. Ayalon is the deputy foreign minister of Israel.
3. Texas terrorist had some curious reading preferences: http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009/12/why-did-nidal-hasan-read-the-middle-east-forum
4. This reads like a Plaut spoof, but it is for real: http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2009/12/27/avatar-the-spiritual-progressive-movie-of-the-decade/ and companion piece: http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2009/12/28/avatar-and-whiteness/
And this one is even funnier: http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2009/12/26/the-seven-moral-principles-of-kwanzaa/
5. A different Dayenu: http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/41995
6. Repost of old item: Israel's Music Man
The Israeli Labor Party recently selected Ehud Barak, who had been prime minister from 1999 to 2001, to serve as its party chief and contender for prime minister in the next election, probably in 2008.
Barak has always been associated in my mind with music - as well as the incredibly harmful policies he has advocated since entering politics. True, Barak was a military hero. He even entered Beirut disguised as a woman to assassinate terrorists, a scene recorded in the movie "Munich." You can imagine how many jokes at his expense that triggered.
But once he left the army, he went out shopping for political ideas and ended up buying the silliest ones available on the Shimon Peres/Oslo vintage clothing rack. He attempted to turn the Golan Heights over to Syria, which would have allowed the Syrian military to advance to the shores of the Sea of Galilee. This inspired me at the time to write a parody of an old Bobby Darin classic, with Ehud Barak singing "Splish Splash I was taking a Ba'ath."
It continued: "Splish, Splash! I jumped back in the bath. Well how was I to knowt here was appeasement going on?"
Later, due to Barak's disastrous policies as prime minister and his attempt to hand over Jerusalem to the PLO savages, a new song seemed called for. Barak had just been creamed in a landslide electoral defeat by Ariel Sharon. The new piece was to the tune of Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat Song." It went:
EH HOOD, day EH EH HOOD Ehud's done and we wan him go home EH, he say EH, he say EH, he say EH, he say EH, he say EH-ay-ay-HOOD Ehud's done and we wan him go home They shoots all night from ole Ramallah (Ehud's done and we wan him go home) As all night he wave white bandana (Ehud's done and we wan him go home) Come, Mr. Tally Mon, tally me election Ehud's done and we wan him go home Come, Mr. Tally Mon, tally the rejection Ehud's done and we wan him go home
Barak is often proclaimed by the media to be the "most decorated Israeli general." But last summer he effectively dropped 4,000 Katyusha rockets on northern Israel, because those attacks were a direct result of his having ordered Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
And now Barak is desperately looking for a new campaign jingle. Being a helpful sort, I thought I would give him a hand.
To understand the new song, you need to recall that in 1998 Barak declared: "I imagine that if I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would, at some stage, have joined one of the terror organizations."
My proposed campaign song for Reb Ehud is based on the wonderful "If I Were a Rich Man" from "Fiddler on the Roof." (Unfortunately Tevye is not running for prime minister.) Ready? Here goes!
Dear God, you made so many, many cowardly people. I realize, of course, that it's no shame to be a coward. But it's no great honor, either! So, what would have been so terrible if I had a small dose of gumption? (music)
If I were a terrorist, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. All day long I'd biddy biddy bomb. If I were a Hamas man. I wouldn't have to work hard. Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. If I were a biddy bomber bum, Yidle-diddle-didle-didle BOMB.
I'd have a big tall house with virgins by the dozen, Right in the midst of Gaza town. A fine tin roof with real al-Kassams below. There would be one long rocket just going up, And one even longer coming down, And one more leading nowhere, just for show. I'd fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and other Labor chiefs, For all the town to see and hear. And each loud "cheep" and "squawk" and "honk" and "quack" Would ring like a Kassam in my ear, As if to say "Here lives a Tanzim man."
If I were a terrorist, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. All day long I'd biddy biddy bomb. If I were a Hamas man. I wouldn't have to work hard. Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. If I were a biddy bomber bum, Yidle-diddle-didle-didle BOMB.
The most important men in town would come to fawn on me! They would ask me to be appeased by them, Like Shimon Peres the Kind. "If you please, Reb Ehud..." "Pardon me, Reb Ehud..." Posing problems that would cross a Tanzim's mind! And it won't make one bit of difference if I answer war or peace. When you're me, they think you really know!
If I were a terrorist, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. All day long I'd biddy biddy bomb. If I were a Hamas man. I wouldn't have to work hard. Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. If I were a biddy bomber bum, Yidle-diddle-didle-didle BOMB.
Lord who made the lion and the lamb, You decreed I should be what I am. Would it spoil some vast eternal plan If I were a ter-ror-ist MAN!!! (Curtain closes)
7. Anti-Semitic Comic Book: : http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=1777 And
8. Need an updated list of Hitlerjugend? Go to http://usacbi.org/ 9. CNN's Bash-Israel Fidelista: http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/30/ted-turner-billionaire-funder-of-the-left/ Monday, December 28, 2009
1. SO let us see if we have this straight. Obama appoints a commissar to head the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. But he appoints one Hannah Rosenthal, who is deeply associated with the anti-Israel lobby group "J Street." Then as her first act in the Obama battle against anti-Semitism, the same Rosenthal attacks Israeli ambassador Michael Oren for his refusal to attend a Bash-Israel rally organized by J Street. For more details, see this: http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/28/andrew-sullivan-unhinged-by-peter-collier/ See this also:
http://www.jstreetjive.com/2009/12/shilling-for-j-street-hannah-rosenthal.html and other items on http://www.jstreetjive.com
Maybe Obama chum Khalidi was not available to do the job.
2. There is suddenly debate in Israel over which figures should appear on new money denomination notes. See http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3825938,00.html This reminded me of a suggestion I made back in the early 1980s.
Back in the early 80s, with inflation at hundreds of percent, I suggested placing on Israeli money notes photos of Arafat and Assad and Stalin, rather than Jewish heroes. After all, THEY deserved to be stuck on money bills losing value at 80% per year!
3. Naw, no hypocrisy here: http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/HebrewU%20-%20Zeev%20Sternhell%20-%20gets%20to%20chose%20what%20is%20an%20ethical%20uprising.htm
4. BGU's David Newman shilling for the anti-Semites in the UK: http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/BGU%20-%20David%20Newman%20-%20feels%20the%20heat%20from%20Board%20of%20Trustees.htm Sunday, December 27, 2009
Where it said "Communist front pro Israel group" it should have been Communist front pro terror group Apologies
If this were my attempt at a spoof, I would agree with you that it is in really poor taste. After all, it is insensitive to invent an Israeli sociologist devoting his or her life to "Queer Studies," claiming he is organizing a special academic journal volume on "Queering the Middle East," promoting transvestism and cross-dressing, and then making up for him or her an insulting mock name to top it off.
Only one problem. Even I could not invent such a critter. He or she really exists. In fact, he/she is one of the leaders and founders of the communist-front pro-Israel group "Machsom Watch."
I keep saying he-or-she because, frankly, I do not know which he-or-she is. I must explain that several web pages describe her as a female, although she sure looks like a male to me. And – please forgive me - this critter's real name is (gulp!!) Adi Kuntsman! No, I did not make that one up, so do not scream at ME for vulgarity! It is what the he-or-she-or-it is now calling itself. His/her web page is here: http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/llc/files/MDCSN/AdiKuntsman.pdf Note the photo and how he/she claims to be an expert on Russian transvestites who made aliyah to Israel. See also http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/ricc/aboutus/people/kuntsman/index.html Naturally he/she is fanatically anti-Israel (http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/kuntsman261009.html) Here is a testimonial about young Adi from his/her anti-Israel wife/partner: http://www.gilasvirsky.com/yehuditkeshet.html
Here is the announcement for the conference:
Queering Middle Eastern Cyberscapes Special issue of Journal of Middle Eastern Women's Studies http://sites.google.com/site/queeringmideasterncyberscapes/home
Guest Editors: Noor Al-Qasimi and Adi Kuntsman
Call for Papers
Digital media and cybercultures have long been explored as fields of identity formation, cultural contestations, and political tensions. Digital mediascapes have also been of particular interest to scholars of gender and sexuality for their potential to transform some gendered, racial, and sexual power structures while reaffirming, and often violently reinforcing, others. This special issue ofJournal of Middle Eastern Women's Studies aims to bring feminist and queer analysis of media and communication technologies (the Internet, mobile phones, surveillance technologies, digital television, and telecommunication) to the field of the Middle East as both a geo-cultural space and a political entity.
Our intention is to examine the intersections, tensions, and co- constitutions of queer sexualities and communication technologies; queerness as a form of digitalized affect and as a political practice; mediated violence and violence of mediation; new technological frontiers and frontiers of identities; and practices of everyday use and digitalized imaginaries. We hope to explore these and other phenomena as they emerge in Middle Eastern countries and communities and their diasporas. In recent years, much work has focused on media in the Middle East, and gender/sexuality in the Middle East; however, there is a paucity of scholarship on the intersection of these fields. Still less work has emphasized queering as a political metaphor in relation to the field of Middle East Studies. The aim of this special issue is to acknowledge the utility of a postcolonial queer critique as applied to this region and its diasporas.
We are soliciting work that engages with the intersection of media and sexuality with reference to the Middle East. Possible topics thus include:
Surveillance, war on terror The policing of sexuality Orientalism in new media cultures Governmentality, biopolitics, and the Middle East Sexuality and media censorship Media technologies (e.g., YouTube, mobile phones, bluetooth, picture/ video messaging) and queerness Queer and/or social networking websites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace) Queer Middle Eastern diasporas in cyberspace HIV/AIDS-related online communities Homophobia LGBT and NGO activism Drag, cross-dressing, butch/femme identities, other queer subjectivities Gay imperialism
We welcome abstracts of articles to be considered for inclusion in this special volume. Please send a bio and a 500-word abstract detailing the topic of your article, the overall context, your material, methodology, and theoretical argument by the 1st of February 2010 to qmecissue@googlemail.com . Authors will be notified by the 15th of February 2010 of the outcome of their submissions. If accepted, full papers should be submitted by the 1st of July 2010. Papers will then be reviewed individually in the standard double- blind review process.
We also welcome shorter pieces of creative or analytical writing (up to 1000 words, or 4000 words for interviews) or visual material on the theme of this special volume. These pieces may be topical and/or polemical. They are not sent out to be peer-reviewed but are selected by the editors of the issue. If you would like to submit a short piece, please contact us to discuss the format and deadlines.
Abstracts and inquiries about this issue should be sent to Thursday, December 24, 2009
1. Harvard Psychiatrist Kenneth Levin on self-hating Jewish anti-Semites:
Auto-Genocide, Jewish Style – by Kenneth Levin Posted By Kenneth Levin On December 24, 2009 @ 12:10 am In FrontPage | 1 Comment
Demonization not only of Israel's Jews but of all Jews, and calls for their mass murder, are a staple of media, mosques and schools throughout most of the Arab world and in some non-Arab Muslim countries such as Iran. Jews are portrayed as vermin or as satanic beings, the source of all human ills, ritual murderers of Muslim and Christian children, evil-doers fit only for extermination. Yet, as in virtually every past situation when incitement against Jews and attacks on them have intensified, some Jews have rushed to volubly defend the Jews' attackers. They have become supporters and cheerleaders even for those most committed to translating their Jew-hatred into action. Hamas's charter quotes a Hadith in which Allah declares that the Day of Judgement will not come until the Jews are all killed and even the stones and trees will help in murdering them. The charter adds that Hamas "aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take." Hamas has, of course, perpetrated innumerable terrorist attacks targeting Israeli civilians, including suicide bombings and rocket and mortar barrages, and Hamas children's television instructs its young audience to kill Jews. Yet Jewish member of Britain's Parliament Gerald Kaufman has affectionately compared Hamas to Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto. American Sara Roy, a "researcher" at Harvard's Center for Middle East Studies and a perennial figure on the Israel-bashing lecture circuit, has waxed rhapsodic about the supposed "evolution in [Hamas's] political thinking… [and] its position on a two-state solution" and defends the organization's administration of Gaza. This as Hamas seeks to impose Sharia law across Gaza and repeatedly proclaims its unswerving commitment to its anti-Israel and anti-Jewish agenda. Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah has declared that "If [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide," and Hezbollah has in fact gone after them worldwide, as in its 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires that claimed 87 lives. But none of this has constrained Noam Chomsky from visiting with Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders, praising the organization and advocating its arming. Norman Finkelstein has likewise met with Hezbollah leaders and offered encomiums to the group. Emoted Finkelstein at one point, "I say this without fear: for those who believe in freedom and dignity, we are all Hezbollah now." Iran's Achmadinejad has, of course, repeatedly asserted there was no Holocaust while promising to visit a future Holocaust on Israel. He has virulently attacked "the Jews" and ratcheted up Iran's support in money, weapons and training to Hamas and Hezbollah. Yet Achmadinejad's Iran, too, has its Jewish supporters, who cast the Iranian theocracy as Israel's victim. This is not limited to the usual culprits such as Chomsky. For example, the voice of the blog "Tikun Olam" (which has now widely come to mean somehow healing the world by attacking and seeking to undermine the Jewish state), one Richard Silverstein, declared, regarding Iran's nuclear threat, "Of course, the Iranians do not have an ICBM to carry such a warhead. Nor do they have a nuclear weapon. But these are mere technicalities when it comes to frightening the world into adopting the Israeli government's priorities and interests." Noteworthy is that many of those who embrace today's would-be exterminators of the Jews make a point of advertising that they are themselves children of Holocaust survivors. Examples are Finkelstein and Sara Roy. In their twisted thinking, they trumpet their parents' history as though it somehow confers on them a special right to back forces that aspire to another Holocaust. A variation on outright Jewish support for purveyors of genocidal Jew-hatred is the spectacle of Jews who downplay the threat and indict those taking it seriously. The latter are ridiculed as paranoiacs mentally scarred by past assaults on the Jews and simply projecting that past onto a relatively benign present. The leader of the new American Jewish lobby "J Street" (which has opposed stronger sanctions against Iran), Jeremy Ben-Ami, characterized as irrational anyone who would construe the threat presented by Hamas or Hezbullah or Iran as so great as to justify a military response. Ben-Ami went on to observe, in a New York Times interview, "… there's their grandmother's voice in their ear; it's the emotional side and the communal history…" Some Israelis promote the same line. Hebrew University political scientist Yaron Ezrahi has virtually made a career of purveying this comprehension of reality. Ezrahi has suggested that the perception of existential threats reflects in large part less actual dangers than a warped world view embraced by some Jews and "founded on a long memory of persecution, genocide, and a bitter struggle for survival…" Many more Jews could be mentioned who support those openly calling for the Jews' annihilation, and still more who downplay the threat and caricature concerned voices. Hardly less unsavory are the myriad Jews who attack Israel's policies as the source of all the nation's difficulties, insist that "peace" can be had if only Israel would reform itself and make sufficient concessions, militantly advocate such a course and say nothing of the genocidal agenda of the nation's enemies or of their aggressive indoctrinating of additional cadres dedicated to enacting that agenda. M.J. Rosenberg, erstwhile director of Israel Policy Forum's Washington Policy Center, has written multiple articles on, for example, Israel and Hamas. He has invariably used them to excoriate Israel and complain about the Jewish state and the U.S. not being more forthcoming to the Palestinian Jihadists – as in "The U.S. should be extending carrots to Hamas" – and has never addressed Hamas's explicit and continually reasserted commitment to the extermination of Israel and the Jews. He has acknowledged Hamas's involvement in terror and its opposition to Israel's existence but has uniformly done so in the context of criticizing Israeli policies. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian mullahs and others of Israel's enemies have not hidden their objective. As has been the case whenever Jews have been under threat, there is no shortage of those from the community who side with the aggressors, or dismiss the threat and demean anyone taking it seriously, or rationalize the threat, cast fellow Jews as instigating it and demand their reform. All, shamefully, lend succor and cover to the would-be annihilators. Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist and historian and author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege.
2. Scratch a leftist and you will find a bolshevik fighting against market competition and in favor of cartels and monopolies. Take Nitzan Horowitz, one of the few remaining Knesset Members of the rump Meretz party. Horowitz wants to pass a new law against competition in pricing books in the country of the People of the Book.
How come?
Well, the past few days some of the leading members of Israel's Literary Left took time off from fighting for the annihilation of Israel by the terrorists to demand that the government manipulate book prices to force them artificially higher. It seems that they are upset because they earn royalties based on a percent of the take when their books get sold. This past week David Grossman, A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and several other literary lefties issued a whine about competition driving book prices lower. The solution, they seem to have sold to Meretz, is to restrict competition in book stores and force prices up.
3. Fighting the New Blood LibelBY LOU MARANO, CONTRIBUTING WRITER http://www.jewishjournal.com/ world/article/fighting_the_new_blood_libel_20091222/ 4.
5. http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/12/shhhmubarak-is-building-a-wall.php Shhh…Mubarak is building a wall An Apartheid Wall?
6. Anyone see anything bizarre about this? http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/12/mosque-at-ground-zero-adding-insult-to-agony.html Mosque at Ground Zero in NY
7. The Zohar on Left vs. Right: http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2009/12/left-out-from-this-weeks-zohar.html
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