Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university.
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It seems that a Jewish settlement filed a libel suit against Maariv, Israel's second largest print daily, and won. Maariv had falsely reported in a news story that the settlement of Maale Rehav'am in the West Bank was sitting on land illegally expropriated from Palestinian Arabs. That turned out to be a lie. Residents of the settlement successful sued. The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court ordered Maariv to pay 13,000 NIS in damages to the settlers and issue a public apology. The whole settlement has 30 people living in it and it is one of those that Obama is demanding that Israel evacuate.
So let us hope this case serves as a grand legal precedent: Tell a lie about settlers and pay!
2. For years I have been claiming in postings, blog entries and articles that the ex-Chief Justice of Israel, Aharon Barak (he is not a relative of Ehud) is an anti-democratic anti-Israel leftist extremist moonbat. Barak was the leading proponent in Israel of the anti-democratic doctrine of "judicial activism," which should be called judicial tyranny, under which non-elected judges make up laws and dictate governmental policy about just about everything. Barak also insisted that anyone who happens to sit on the Israeli Supreme Court should issue rulings based on "enlightened opinion," which means whatever Aharon Barak personally thinks in any given week, and that those same sitting judges should perpetually select other judges by themselves to sit on the Supreme Court and other courts, regardless of what the Israeli voter wants.
When I would slap around Barak in my postings, many people objected that I was showing disrespect to Israel's Chief Justice, and was exaggerating his anti-democratic tendencies. Last week Barak had the kindness to step forward and prove that I was correct, and in fact showed I was underestimating his political biases and dislike for democracy.
Last week, Barak took off his muzzle, now that he is retired, and launched a malicious broadside against Israel, Zionism, and "settlers." The most outrageous thing he said was that the Jews were plotting to throw the Arabs into the sea. The truth of course is that the Arabs are trying to throw the Jews into the sea, but Orwellian inversions are the favorite tactic of leftist cranks. Barak also criticized Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria as an "occupation," and said the Israeli presence there leads to human rights offenses and racism elsewhere in Israel. Barak's presence on the Supreme Court produced anti-democratic restrictions to freedom of speech and to the trashing of any form of checks and balances on the court's "activism," and led to an explosion in anti-Jewish racism by Israeli Arabs and Jewish leftists.
There are numerous news reports on the Barak outburst, but try these:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3737416,00.html
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3736984,00.html
3. LA Times runs a pro-settlement column!:
Opinion
In defense of 'settlements'
Jews belong in Judea and Samaria as much as Palestinians who stayed in Israel.
By Yisrael Medad
June 28, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-medad28-2009jun28,0,6267445.story
No one, including a president of the United States of America, can presume to tell me, a Jew, that I cannot live in the area of my national homeland. That's one of the main reasons my wife and I chose in 1981 to move to Shiloh, a so-called settlement less than 30 miles north of Jerusalem.
After Shiloh was founded in 1978, then-President Carter demanded of Prime Minister Menachem Begin that the village of eight families be removed. Carter, from his first meeting with Begin, pressed him to "freeze" the activity of Jews rebuilding a presence in their historic home. As his former information aide, Shmuel Katz, related, Begin said: "You, Mr. President, have in the United States a number of places with names like Bethlehem, Shiloh and Hebron, and you haven't the right to tell prospective residents in those places that they are forbidden to live there. Just like you, I have no such right in my country. Every Jew is entitled to reside wherever he pleases."
We now fast-forward to President Obama, who declared on June 15 in remarks at a news conference with Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, that Jewish communities beyond the Green Line "in past agreements have been categorized as illegal."
I believe the president has been misled. There can be nothing illegal about a Jew living where Judaism was born. To suggest that residency be permitted or prohibited based on race, religion or ethnic background is dangerously close to employing racist terminology.
Suppose someone suggested that Palestinian villages and towns in pre-1967 Israel were to be called "settlements" and that, to achieve a true peace, Arabs should be removed from their homes. Of course, separation or transfer of Arabs is intolerable, but why is it quite acceptable to demand that Jews be ethnically cleansed from the area? Do not Jews belong in Judea and Samaria as much as Palestinians who stayed in the state of Israel?
Some have questioned why Jews should be allowed to resettle areas in which they didn't live in the years preceding the 1967 war, areas that were almost empty of Jews before 1948 as well. But why didn't Jews live in the area at that time? Quite simple: They had been the victims of a three-decades-long ethnic cleansing project that started in 1920, when an Arab attack wiped out a small Jewish farm at Tel Hai in Upper Galilee and was followed by attacks in Jerusalem and, in 1921, in Jaffa and Jerusalem.
In 1929, Hebron's centuries-old Jewish population was expelled as a result of an Arab pogrom that killed almost 70 Jews. Jews that year removed themselves from Gaza, Nablus and Jenin. The return of my family to Shiloh -- and of other Jews to more than 150 other communities over the Green Line since 1967 -- is not solely a throwback to claimed biblical rights. Nor is it solely to assert our right to return to areas that were Jewish-populated in the 20th century until Arab violence drove them away. We have returned under a clear fulfillment of international law. There can be no doubt as to the legality of the act of my residency in Shiloh.
I am a revenant -- one who has returned after a long absence to ancestral lands. The Supreme Council of the League of Nations adopted principles following the 1920 San Remo Conference aimed at bringing about the "reconstitution" of a Jewish National Home. Article 6 of those principles reads: "The administration of Palestine ... shall encourage ... close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands." That "land" was originally delineated to include all of what is today Jordan as well as all the territory west of the Jordan River.
In 1923, Britain created a new political entity, Transjordan, and suspended the right of Jews to live east of the Jordan River. But the region in which I now live was intended to be part of the Jewish National Home. Then, in a historical irony, a Saudi Arabian refugee, Abdallah, fleeing the Wahabis, was afforded the opportunity to establish an Arab kingdom where none had existed previously -- only Jews. As a result, in an area where prophets and priests fashioned the most humanist and moral religion and culture on Earth, Jews are now termed "illegals."
Many people insist that settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. But that convention does not apply to Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza district. Its second clause makes it clear that it deals with the occupation of "the territory of a high contracting party." Judea and Samaria and Gaza, which Israel gained control of in 1967, were not territories of a "high contracting party." Jewish historical rights that the mandate had recognized were not canceled, and no new sovereign ever took over in Judea and Samaria or in Gaza.
Obama has made his objections to Israeli settlements known. But other U.S. presidents have disagreed. President Reagan's administration issued a declaration that Israeli settlements were not illegal. Support for that position came from Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, former president of the International Court of Justice, who determined that Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria did not constitute "occupation." It also came from a leading member of Reagan's administration, the former dean of the Yale Law School and former undersecretary of State, Eugene Rostow, who asserted that "Israel has a stronger claim to the West Bank than any other nation or would-be nation [and] the same legal right to settle the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as it has to settle Haifa or West Jerusalem."
Any suggestions, then, of "freezing" and halting "natural growth" are themselves not only illegal but quite immoral.
4. Well, the main headline involving political clashes between the "Chareidi" ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem and the rest of the population there these days is about a parking garage operating on Shabbat. However there is another bizarre confrontation that has been less noticed. It was triggered because of an idiotic attempt to prohibit imports of fur into Israel.
Ronit Tirosh, a backbencher member of the Knesset from the Kadima Party, decided to try to drum up some votes for Kadima among animal rights nuts and people who think fur is murder. The problem is that a lot of the black-coated ultra-Orthodox guys wear fur "streimels," those archaic round fur hats that were in fashion in Poland 400 years ago and that some of the Chareidim think make them look more pious. Trust me, Moses and King David did not wear streimels.
But dubious taste in haberdashery aside, there was no reason to antagonize the Chareidim with a silly anti-fur law designed to appease animal rights nuts. After suggesting that the Chareidim just use synthetic furs, Tirosh and her cronies seem to be backing down now.
Which is good, because I have a confession to make. I have a streimel made out of fur. Actually it is a Davy Crocket hot with a raccoon's tail down the back of it, and I only wear my streimel on Purim and once in a while to spook my students. But on this I am with the Chareidim – and am telling Kadima politicians: Hands off my Tennessee-fur Streimel!
By the way, in all his new performances, Cohen insist on wearing this dorky "Rat Pack" style fedora hat.
2.. I happen to be one of those people who think that death does not get someone off the hook for having dabbled in anti-Semitism. With the whole world of pop and preadolescence in shock over the death of singer Michael Jackson, it behooves us to remind you all that Mikey also was prone to outbursts of anti-Semitism. This was many years before the reports that he was getting interested in Islam and building a mosque in Bahrain. (I am sure his interest in Islam was as genuine and deep as the interest by Madonna and Roseanne Barr in ka=BBBAAAALLLL-la – as they mispronounce it.)
A few years back Jackson took time off from riding the roller coaster with his 10 year old friends in "Neverland" and recorded a nasty anti-Semitic song with lyrics that included, "Kick me, Jew me," and similar sentiments. He also referred to Jews as leeches and other metaphors.
Here are some web items about Mikie's little problem with members of the chosen people who were over the age of 10:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4466038.stm
http://www.byroncrawford.com/2005/11/michael_jackson.html
http://www.arlenepeck.com/column_archives_1.htm#jacko
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/moonbatcentral/2005/06/michael-jackson-and-hollywood.html
Jackson even pretended at one point to have some interest in Judaism. When that story was in the media, I posted this (http://www.conservativetruth.org/opinionet/archives2/ccsp/ccsp8.htm in the year 2000):
Michael Jackson's Judaism
There are reports out this week that yet another Hollywood entertainer is suddenly interested in Judaism. The newest one though is none other than Michael Jackson. This is the same Jackson who recorded a couple of years back a song featuring the words "Kike Me, Jew Me," which triggered a storm. At the time the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman, added Jackson to his list of Hollywood anti-Semites being granted papal absolution by Foxman, earning him his current nickname, the Twentieth Century Foxman.
Jackson's sudden interest in Judaism comes after the other highly publicized cases of entertainers taking an look into Jewish mysticism, including Madonna and Roseanne Barr. It is all part of a larger wave of Hollywood airheads getting "into" religion, which includes Richard Gere's adoption of Buddhism and John Travolta's levitating the molecules in his butt over to the Scientology "church". In Jackson's case, he has reportedly approached the controversial Rabbi Shmuel Boteach for "spiritual counseling". Boteach used to be a Rabbi at Oxford University, with ties to the Lubavitch movement, but is most famous these days for his saucy popularizing and discussing of Jewish attitudes towards sex (including an interview in Playboy).
Jackson's sudden interest in Judaism raises a number of questions, not least regarding the anti-Semitic song he recorded earlier. SO let me give you my reading of this new "Jewish" Michael Ben-Yaakov.
First of all, Mikey's "Kike Me, Jew Me" song appears in retrospect to be a desperate call to Reb Boteach to connect him to Judaism. Jackson=s constant grabbing of his crotch while singing has to do with his contemplation of that rite of passage necessary for any male to join Judaism and the fears it must arouse. Suppressed for decades is the fact that the REAL original unabridged name of the Jackson Five was the Jackson Fivebooksofmoses. And all that hanging around with twelve year olds that earned Jackson his reputation as a pederast? Why, he was just attending with them Bar Mitzvah lessons, that is all.
And what about Jackson's famous series of surgeries and medical douches, the ones that have produced of him a creature of ambiguous racial and gender identity? Friends, this was nothing more than the consequence of Jackson studying the Scroll of Ruth from the Bible and then, well, deciding that he wishes to look like Ruth.
3.. In Israeli academia nary a week goes by without some university holding a malicious one-sided anti-Israel "conference" consisting of hate propaganda misrepresented as scholarship. The participants in these "conferences" never seem to include anyone who thinks Israel has the right to exist and to defend itself. The conferences are pluralistic and balanced in the sense that they include both Jewish and Arab anti-Semites, and may contain a whole range of communists from different splinters.
Well, this coming week Tel Aviv University will once again show its disdain for academic standards and serious scholarship. It is to host yet another Bash-Israel one-sided indoctrination "conference," this one purporting to debate and discuss the Psychological Influences of Service in the Territories. In other words, it will be a pseudo-academic litany of rantings about how Israel's "occupation" of the "occupied territories" causes devastating psychic damage to both the "Palestinian" inhabitants of those areas and to the Israelis serving there in the security services.
Now I can absolutely guarantee you that not a single speaker at this grand academic event will mention any psychic damages caused to Jews from having thousands of rockets fired at their children by genocidal Islamofascist terrorists. There will also be no discussions of the psychological stress caused to those Jew civilians blown to smithereens by suicide bombers, or murdered by snipers. In fact, no one will even mention the psychic damages caused to Jews by Arab terrorists whose violence makes it necessary for Jews to give up their time to do reserve duty and otherwise help prevent the terrorists from murdering Jews. No one at all will mention any psychological damages done to Jews from Arab fascists demanding that Jews be mass murdered, or when Arab leaders deny there ever was a Holocaust or claim that Jews drink the blood of gentile children for Passover.
Here is the official description of the conference (I think the main difference between this Tel Aviv University event and the Holocaust Denial conference in Iran was that the coffee was better in Tehran). This North-Korean re-education "conference" will take place Sunday, June 28, 2009 at Tel-Aviv University in the Hall of Justice, the Trubowicz Law Faculty Building
Official conference announcement:
Conference: "The Psychological Influences of Service in the Territories" - June 28th
Israeli society imposes on its soldiers serving in the army the role of control over another nation - the Palestinian people living in the Territories; these soldiers serve as the almost exclusive contact between Israeli society and Palestinian society. In this conference we will examine the psychological influences of the army service in the occupied territories, both on the soldiers themselves and on the Jewish society in Israel, that avoids direct contact with the Palestinians in the Territories, but sends and receives back its sons and daughters in their army service there. We will examine how open these influences are and how they are spoken about in our society, army, and mental health personnel.
Convention and Registration
09:00-09:30 Greetings on behalf of Tami Shteinmetz Center: Ephraim Lavi
Machsom Watch (seditious anti-Israel pro-terror propaganda group --- SP): Reva Bachrach - psychoactive.
09:30-11:30 First Session: Witnesses.
Reva Bachrach - Machsom Watch (seditious anti-Israel pro-terror propaganda group --- SP) Chairman – psychoactive: Barrier - salt of the earth? Soldiers' atrocities in the Intifada: Perspectives from the soldier, the company, the army and society.
Yoel Elitzur - Hebrew University: "To See if I'm Smiling" segments from Tamar Yarom's film.
Tal Ben Sira-Morag - one of the film's participants.
The cruelty of Givati (an IDF army brigade), and Liberal Morals (now THERE is an objective title for a lecture! – SP)
Zvi Bekerman - Hebrew University
11:30-11:45 Coffee break
Second Session: Cover-ups, Silencing and Silence
Chairman: Uri Hadar (anti-Israel post-Zionist extremist – SP) - Tel Aviv University, Psychoactive
Nisim Avishar - Herzelia Interdisciplinary Center: Blurring, Denial and Silencing from Close-up: The psychologists in the army and the first Intifada. Psychoactive
Edna Lomsky-Feder (one of the thesis advisors for that infamous thesis claiming that Jewish soldiers do not rape Arab women because the Jews are such racists --- SP) - Hebrew University: Psychological Talk and Normalization of the effects of the Occupation
Arnona Zahavi - Beyt Berl College: Dangerous empathy - silence and silencing in the psychological treatment of soldiers who killed and injured (not a word about sucicide bombers? – SP)
13:30-14:15 Lunch break
14:15-15:45 Small group discussions: The presence [lingering effects] of the Occupation in my personal and professional life
15:45-17:00 Final session
Chairman: Nachi Elon - psychodrama
Daniel Bartal - Tel Aviv University (who says that the Jews refusal to abandon Zionism is the real obstacle to peace and that Jews are racists but Arabs are not --- SP): The psychological impact of the Occupation on the Jewish society in Israel, and the price it pays for it.
Participation in the Kenes is free of charge
For details and registration: kenes@psychoactive.org.il Roni Shalit:0546-466582, Tami Cohen: 0544-628618
What is Psychoactive?
Behind the name "Psychoactive" stands a group of mental health men/women who have taken upon themselves to be involved in social-political subjects in general, and in the Jewish-Arab conflict in the territories in particular. The group acts out of recognition of the basic rights of a person, as a person, to spiritual well-being, alongside physical well-being.
We recruit the tools at our disposal as men/women involved in the treating professions, to deepen the understanding and awareness of the subject of occupation, and the continuing war between the two nations, and its repercussions in the populations on both sides of the conflict. These tools also serve us in advancing healing processes and advancing the psychological welfare of the individual, which is influenced by the societal-political reality in which he lives.
The group is made up of Israeli Arabs and Jews, and contacts are made with Arab mental health personnel from the Palestinian Authority. Members come from the social work professions, both from the field and from the academic community.
The group serves as a laboratory for developing initiatives in these subjects, according to the personal initiatives of the members of the group. The group meets every few weeks in different parts of the country, and is in constant touch through an Internet list.
Our activity
…
Safety searches in Ben Gurion airport of Arab citizens: Writing of letters of protest against humiliating treatment of Arab citizens in searches in Ben Gurion airport. (They prefer that bombs go off on planes --- SP)
The psychological repercussions of the second Lebanon war: Writing and distributing petitions during the Lebanon war, that warn against the psychological repercussions on Israeli and Lebanese citizens. (Yeah, right, with no mention of the impact of 4000 katyusha rockets fired at the Jews)
A Study Day by PsychoActive Group 28.6.09
Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights
The Psychological Effects of Military Service in the Occupied Territories on Soldiers and on Israeli Society
Israeli society entrusts the task of controlling and administering another nation, the Palestinian people, to the soldiers who serve in its army. These soldiers constitute the more or less exclusive interface between Israeli society and Palestinian society in the Occupied Territories. Their encounter with Palestinian residents - at the military checkpoints, carrying out arrests, and while undermining freedom in diverse other forms – takes place from a position of power, authority and control and very often involves infringements of basic human rights.
This study day will offer an opportunity to consider the psychological effects of Israeli military service in the occupied Palestinian territories, from the point of view of the soldiers themselves, and from that of Jewish Israeli society as a whole, which, while avoiding any direct encounter with Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, dispatches its conscripted sons and daughters to serve there . We shall also look into the question of the extent to which these effects are dealt with and discussed in Israeli society, within the army, and among mental health professionals.
Our activities have included (here are some neutral academic research projects --- SP):
• Protest against the manner in which Majid Kna'ane's trial was conducted. Kna'ane, an intern in psychology at the Jaffa Mental Health clinic, was accused and found guilty of committing security violations.
• Writing up and distributing a petition during the war in Lebanon, calling for its immediate end, as well as explaining its consequences for the mental state of the citizens of Israel and Lebanon.
• Co-organizing a public event during the Israeli offensive on Gaza: A Gathering to Mourn and to Protest: Grieve together & reject the massive killing of civilians.
• Gathering testimonies of current occurrences in Gaza and their distribution.
By Steven Plaut
I have something to confess.
For well over four decades now I have fantasized
about punching Leonard Cohen in the
mouth. Sometimes the punch is followed by a pie
in the face. Sometimes by a wedgie.
I raise this matter of cosmic interest because I
was taken back to the 60s as a result of the
news story this week that Cohen will be coming to
town, and by town I mean "Palestine." This week
it was announced that Cohen, with his musical
posse, will be arriving in late September to
perform in Israel and then in PLO-occupied
Ramallah, where he is to be hosted by terrorists
from the Fat'h militia. His Ramallah performance
will be nominally sponsored by the Israel-bashing
terrorist-appeasing Amnesty International. One
Kadura Fars, a Fat'h sidekick of jailed
mass-murderer Marwan Barghouti, is to serve as
Cohen's local impresario and host in
terror-occupied Ramallah. . In an interview
about his coming hajj to Terrorland, Cohen
pontificated (see
<http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3737035,00.html>http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3737035,00.html
for report in Hebrew) that in that land there
live two equal peoples equally entitled to a state each.
Yeah sure there are.
So Cohen is trying to pull a Daniel Barenboim without the baton.
Leonard Cohen became "in" back in the mid-1960s,
at least he was "in" among certain varieties of
Sixties characters and beatnik-wannabes who
slouched about the dingy alleys of my home town
of Philadelphia. I recall that he became "cool"
at just about the same time that super-comedian
Alan Sherman released his delicious record album,
"My Son, the Folksinger." For those of you below
the age of 40, a record album is a wheel made of
vinyl plastic that makes music on prehistoric
contraptions called record players. If you have
never heard Alan Shepherd do his "folk singer"
shtick, you can see some clips of his old
materials on Youtube. They are mind-blowing (if
you excuse that Sixtiesism). I always assumed
Cohen was the real target of Sherman's mocking of folksingers.
Anyhow, Cohen himself, born 1934, grew up in a
Jewish home and a Jewish school in the Jewish
part of Montreal. He was into poetry and started
writing songs in the 50s. Judy Collins, a
peace-and-flower-power folk singer with a lovely
voice but atrocious politics, made Cohen famous
by singing some of his songs. (Collins was a
regular sidekick to Stalinist folksinger Pete Seeger.)
Meanwhile, in my own Philly urban circles in the
mid-sixties, Cohen was becoming de rigueur among
all the "Beautiful People." In the Sixties
Woody Allen was still funny ("My wife is so
immature; she keeps coming in and sinking my bath
toys!"). Dobie Gillis was the best thing on the
black-and-white TV. Atlantic City had no
casinos. Cohen could have been a San Fran flower
child in a 60s Love-In or a Berkeley street performer.
The "Beautiful People" were the insufferable
twits who ran around using the word "beautiful"
instead of punctuation marks, describing every
experience and every person they could as being
"really beautiful." Most of the "Beautiful
People" were actually chicks, although they were
followed about by pimply young guys willing to
pepper their own speech with the phrase "really
beautiful" in the hope of touching the chests of
some of the Beautiful-People chicks. I say
chests, because back in the mid-1960s teenagers
(at least the ones I knew in Philly) seemed only
vaguely aware of the existence of additional
bases surpassing that comprising second
base. Even worse, I went to an all-boys high
school, which means that few of my friends had
ever gotten even to "first base." We had heard a
rumor about a girl in one of the local Catholic
high schools who had to quit school because she
had gotten pregnant, but we were not too clear on how that worked.
I guess the best way to sum up the cultural chasm
between then and now is to note that the word
"cop" today is a noun that can take the
accusative or objective case within a sentence
and the word "feel" is a transitive verb, but
back in my Sixties all-boys high school it was
the exact grammatical opposite. If I lost you
on that, I am afraid I cannot elaborate without
risking my GP rating as a family incitement service.
Overall, when I became acquainted with his music,
I thought Cohen was a bit of an "over-Beautiful"
jerk, although I must admit that even I was
willing to hum "Susanne Takes you Down" if it
would get me a Saturday Night date. Nay, I
confess, it was even worse than that. Later, as
an undergraduate, when I earned my lunch money by
giving guitar lessons to some younger Phila.
souls, I distinctly remember teaching the chords
and words to "Susanne" and to a few other Cohen songs.
Aside from the peace-love-and-flower-power
posturing of the "beautiful" Leonard Cohen, I
guess what I really found insufferable enough to
motivate my fantasy of punching him in the face
was his obnoxious lyrics about Jesus. What was a
nice Canadian Jewish poet, one named Cohen no
less, doing writing Jesus lyrics and other songs
with Christian themes? And they were not even
very good, so my guess is my Christian 60s
friends found them irritating as well. Cohen
does occasionally use imagery from the Tanakh,
that Testament you'd think a Cohen would want to
use, like in a song about Isaac or another about
King David (see
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOI5ApiaYw0>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOI5ApiaYw0)
, although he mangles the stories and the images
there. He has also dabbled in Buddhism and wrote
a book called Beautiful Loser (catch the
Beautiful, guys? And he was not even trying to
undo a chick's bra when he wrote it!), which
supposedly contains his Zen "ideas."
Cohen came to Israel and appeared before Israeli
troops during the Yom Kippur war, but his cozying
up to Palestinian terrorists these days douses
any credit he might still be enjoying for
that. There is a rumor he met Ariel Sharon at
the time. But his interest in Israel was
fleeting, while his politically correct leftist
goofiness has stayed with him for decades.
Still, there was a quiet amusement, together with
some nice chord sequences, in some of Cohen's
songs, and I can still tolerate listening to up
to 3 or 4 of his songs every few months. Cohen
was never a superstar, in spite of the moron
writing in one of the Israeli newspapers
recently, who put him up on the same pedestal
with Dylan and the Beatles as 60s icons. Yeah sure he was.
Well into his 70s, starting in 2008 Cohen
returned to perform, and still sings and does
some concerts, although his voice has become
rather weak. Other people sometimes make it big
recording Cohen songs. The accompanying Cohen
background singers and instruments have not
changed much in 40 years. I happened to catch
him on an Israeli cable channel recently when the
wife selfishly would not let me change the
channel to watch the Simpsons. The main change
that I noticed was that Cohen these days is
obnoxiously politically correct and sings
atrocious political songs. One of his newer
numbers proclaim,s with a military beat that
sounds like a German marching song, that soon we
will bring democracy to America. In other words,
America is not democratic at all and needs us 60s
Beautiful People who know how to undo bras while
sniffing tulips to conduct a revolution and make
it democratic. Another even worse-sounding
Teutonic marching song proclaims, "First We'll
Take Manhattan and then We'll Take Berlin."
More beautiful people with flowers in their hair
bringing enlightenment to the barbarians, I guess.
Cohen probably thinks that the Palestinian
terrorhoids who will be hosting him also spend
their days reading Zen, talking to flowers,
listening to Joan Baez, and trying to undo the
bras of the Really-Beautiful People. He probably
has not heard about those thousands of PLO
rockets landing on the beautiful Jews who live in
Sderot and Netivot. And I am sure it very
occurred to him to protest Obama's plans to expel
the beautiful settlers from their beautiful homes
in beautiful Judea and Samaria.
All of which is why I would still really like to
punch him in the face, throw a pie at him, give
him an atomic wedgie, or maybe even a whirly.*
* Alas, those of you who do not know what a
whirly is will have to look it up: see
<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Whirly>http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Whirly
– a dictionary for other archaic expressions of the 1960s.
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/suppression-violence-discrimination-and.html
Sunday, June 21, 2009
<http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/suppression-violence-discrimination-and.html>Suppression,
Violence, Anti-Jewish Apartheid and Cover-Up at the University of Haifa
<http://www.ynetnews.com/PicServer2/02022009/2028603/7_wa.jpg>
[]
The Jihad Sheikh with his minions at the University of Haifa
Well, things were already looking disgraceful and
<http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/apartheid-comes-to-university-of-haifa.html>embarrassing
enough for the University of Haifa, thanks to the
approval of the heads of the university to allow
the Jihad Sheikh,
<http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3733099,00.html>Raed
Salah, the head of the Islamofascist movement
among Israeli Moslems, to speak on campus this
past week. The Jihad Sheikh there called for Arab
students to become "shaheed martyrs," code for
suicide bombers. Moreover, the university had
also given official instructions to the guards
present to prevent Jewish students from entering
the lecture hall in which the Jihad Sheikh was
speaking. The Jewish student protesters present
described the behavior of the guards, following
university instructions, as the conducting of a
"selection" (the name for the separation out of
Jews done by the Germans). But then the
university got itself in even deeper when it
issued a statement that denied altogether that
the Jewish students had been barred from entering
the lecture hall or that the university officials
had given any such instructions to the guards.
That statement can be
<http://wordpress.haifa.ac.il/?p=1155>read here
in Hebrew: It says explicitly that Jews were NOT barred from entering.
Except they were. The university is for all
intents and purposes trying to cover up the
disgrace of ordering that the lecture hall for
the terrorist Salah be kept judenrein. Numerous
media outfits, including those with leftist
leanings, have confirmed that Jewish students
were barred from entering. Eyewitness reports
also confirm this. And the very same disingenuous
statement by the university DENYING that Jewish
students were barred from entering the hall then
goes on to explain why it was necessary to keep
them out: to avoid violence and confrontation
inside the lecture hall. Of course violence and
confrontation could also have been avoided by
preventing the Jihad Sheikh from entering the
campus in the first place and also by giving his
student hosts the bum's rush straight to the Gaza
Strip. The university statement says that the
university had no legal choice but to allow the
Sheikh to address the Arab students on campus
facilities. This is also a lie. Not only did the
university have a choice, but – given the
Sheikh's call for terrorism and violence in his
speech – the university had a legal OBLIGATION to
bar him from campus and may have broken the law
by allowing him to engage in incitement to violence in the campus.
But now, the most damning report of all appears
in the Haifa weekly Zman Haifa June 19, 09, page
20. In its news report by its education reporter
Orna Nirenfeld the weekly not only confirms that
the guards were under university orders to
prevent Jewish students from entering the lecture
hall in which the Jihad Sheikh was calling for
the murder of Jews, but the Jewish protesters
near the hall were also assaulted and beaten by
the guards in their efforts to keep the lecture
hall judenrein. One student describes how women
wearing headscarves and men with Arab-looking
features were being waved through while anyone
obviously Jewish was being stopped and were
physically being pushed away from the entrance by
over-zealous guards. Among the students violently
beaten by the guards was Shlomo Variett, head of
the "Lavi" student organization on campus.
The Jewish students barred from entering the hall
held their own noisy protest against the Jihad
Sheikh outside the hall, waving Israeli flags and
singing Hatikva. One ultra anti-Israel professor
at the University of Haifa, Micah Leshem of
psychology, demanded that the University take
disciplinary action against the JEWISH counter-protesters!!
<http://www.ynet.co.il/PicServer2/02022009/2028826/untitled.jpg>
[]
Jewish student criminals against whom University
of Haifa "academic" demands disciplinary action.
To whom can you complain?
University of Haifa:
President of the University of Haifa
Prof. Aaron Ben-Ze'ev
University of Haifa
Mt Carmel, 31905 Haifa Israel
Tel: 972-4-8240101
Fax: 972-4-8240281
E-mail: <mailto:abenzeev@univ.haifa.ac.il%20>abenzeev@univ.haifa.ac.il
Rector of the University of Haifa
Prof. Yossi Ben-Artzi
University of Haifa
Mt Carmel, 31905 Haifa Israel
Tel: 972-4-8240405
Fax: 972-4-8342101
Email: <mailto:yossib@univ.haifa.ac.il>yossib@univ.haifa.ac.il
Chairman of the Board of Governors
Mr. Leon Charney
Law Office of Leon H. Charney
Broadway 1441
New York, NY 10018
Phone: 212-819-0994
E-mail: <mailto:charney@lhcharney.com>charney@lhcharney.com
University "Friends of" Offices Outside Israel
are listed here:
<http://www.haifa.ac.il/html/html_eng/friends.htm>http://www.haifa.ac.il/html/html_eng/friends.htm
2. Time for us to take a
bath? http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131965
Iran Blames 'Dirty Zionists;' At Least 19 Dead
1. The Attempt to Legitimize and Prettify Hamas by the Anti-Semites
http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35191
Hamas: The Terror Elite
By: Steven Plaut
*Friday, June 19, 2009*
------------------------------
A new pamphlet the details the brutal history of Gaza's jihadist rulers.
It is one of the oddities of the global war on terrorism that while al-Qaeda
is almost universally condemned, its Sunni terrorist counterparts in Hamas
continue to attract a devoted following. Former president Jimmy Carter
annually sings Hamas's praises, insisting to all who will listen that
Western governments must reach out to Gaza's jihadist rulers. At "peace"
demonstrations and on college campuses, banners are waved in honor of the
group openly sworn to the destruction of Israel and the extermination of
Jews worldwide. All this and more is the subject of Steven Plaut's
devastating new pamphlet, "Hamas: The Terror Elite."
In a sweeping survey of Hamas's bloody history, Plaut reveals that the
terror group remains unwaveringly committed to its goal of carrying out a
new genocide against Jews. Plaut also describes the little-mentioned reality
that the self-described "legitimate" representative of the Palestinian people
is also their most brutal tormentor. Terrorizing its own, Hamas tortures
Gaza's residents, forces them to live under oppressive Islamic law, and
dispatches "vice squads" to deal with those who dare to defy its fanatical
rule. It's little wonder that Hamas has found its firmest allies in the
mullahs of Iran and Osama Bin Laden's terrorist shock troops. As Plaut's
pamphlet shows beyond any doubt, "Hamas and al-Qaeda are basically two sides
of the same Jihad." To read "Hamas: The Terror Elite," please click here.
<http://wdl3.streamhoster.com/seanruiz/Other/Hamas-Steven%20Plaut.pdf>
The full (a bit long) document can be read here:
http://wdl3.streamhoster.com/seanruiz/Other/Hamas-Steven%20Plaut.pdf
2. Phyllis Chesler: End the Illegal Occupation of Jerusalem !! (by
Palestinian squatters)
http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2009/06/16/end-the-illegal-occupation-of-jerusalem/
3. The Weekly Standard reports the story of the University of Haifa
outrage:
In Which an Anti-Zionist Pro-Hamas Islamist Delivers a Lecture at Haifa
University and Jewish Students Are Barred
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/06/in_which_an_antizionist_proham_1.asp
4. The atrocity at the University of Haifa, in which the Islamofascist
Sheikh Raed Salah (head of the Islamofascist movement in israel) was
invited by a pro-jihad group of Arab students to speak on campus and where
Jewish students were barred from entering th electure hall, continues to
make tsunami waves.
The Sheikh there called on Arab students to become shaheed
(code for suicide bombing terrorists) martyrs. First the University of
Haifa has issued an official statement regarding the event. It can be
viewed in Hebrew here: http://wordpress.haifa.ac.il/?p=1155
It essentially says that while the University of Haifa dislikes the idea of
the Jihad Sheikh speaking, it cannot stop him and cannot stop the
Arabs student group from inviting anyone it pleases to campus. It then
contains a denial that Jews were barred from entering the lecture hall, but
in the very next sentence the statement contradicts itself. It insists that
allowing Jewish students into the hall (a group of noisy Zionist students
waving Israeli flags was demonstrating OUTSIDE the hall) would have created
the conditions for violent confrontation and would have been a clear and
present danger.
So to put this in simple English, the claim that Jewish students were NOT
barred from the lecture hall is false and the very same statement debunks
its own claim. Incidentally, the claim has been debunked by others. In a
posting to an internal chat list of University of Haifa profs, Yuval Yonay,
one of the most openly anti-Israel and pro-Hamas members of the faculty
(he teaches "Queer Studies" and a one-sided indoctrination course called
"Sociology of the Occupation" in which no pro-Israel materials are
included), reports - while supporting the speech by the Jihad Sheikh - that
his own Jewish students confirmed to him that THEY were barred from enetring
the lecture hall because they are Jews. And no one would ever suspect
Yonay of inventing such a claim to promote a Zionist political agenda.
I would like to see the University play the "academic freedom fiddle" if
some students were to invite Moshe Feiglin to speak on campus (while
barring Arab students from entering the lecture hall?) or some leader of
one of the fringe Kahanist groups. I have a month's salary bet on the
University banning the talk on grounds that it would represent "racism."
(Tel Aviv University banned a student art exhibit protesting the
treatrment of the Falun Gong cult group, because the university was afraid
it would offend the China Embassy staff.) (For details go to
http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Pandering%20to%20Communism.htm)
The University, like other universities in similar circumstances, rags on
about freedom of speech on campus. Well, I happen to know of Jewish
students who tried to enter Haifa U campus with Israeli flags to support the
Cast Lead operations against the Hamas and they were prevented from
entering.
Meanwhile, Hebrew readers should read this interesting column by Dr. David
Bukay of the University of Haifa:
http://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/190784
It is entitled, "There are Anti-Semitic Faculty Members at the University of
Haifa" and Bukay writes a damning expose. Bukay himself has been persecuted
and harassed in the past because he dared to make politically incorrect
statements in class. (Compare that with the passivity of the University when
it comes to Yonay's "Sociology of the Occupation" in-classroom
indoctrination!)
See also this:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1245184871784&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
and
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3733193,00.html
4. Ben Dror Yemini, the editor of Maariv, is at his best in his column this
weekend. If I find the whole thing in English I will post it, but here is
one segment I will translate for you. It is a citation from the Arab
fascist Azmi Bishara, who used to be a Knesset Member in Israel. He is
now in hiding, wanted by Israel for espionage
and treason for providing the Hezballah with intelligence during the 2006
war (designed to help it shoot rockets at the Jews).
Yemini cites Bishara as saying in an inteview (I may be translating
Yemini's own translation into Hebrew of what Bishara said in English, but
bear with me):
"I do not think there is any Palestinian people at all. I think there is
an Arab people. I always thought this. I think the 'Palestinian people' is
nothing but a colonialist invention. When was there ever such a nation or
people?"
Two states for two people, indeed!
5. Those fun loving Palestinians:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8096742.stm
Page last updated at 09:21 GMT, Friday, 12 June 2009 10:21 UK
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
Palestinian boy 'hanged for collaboration'
6. The REAL Axis of Evil:
http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/06/european-left-is-more-dangerous-for-jews-than-the-european-right.php
would find it interesting to hear this one additional twist on the story.
We have been reporting to you how the University of Haifa approved not
only the speaking of the head of the Islamofascist pro-Hamas "Islamic
Movement" in Israel on campus but even okayed the idea of
conducting anti-Jewish "selection" at the entrance to prevent Jewish
students from attending the lecture. The lecture hall was kept Judenrein.
Just try to imagine the responses of the university if a group of Jewish
students had sought to conduct any sort of event or lecture on campus,
even Yom Kippur services, in which Arabs students were to be be preventing
physically from entering a campus facility! If non-Jewish students were
to bar Jewish students from entering a lecture hall anywhere else, even at
such pro-jihad campuses as York University in Toronto, the whole world
would be up in arms.
In any case, now it turns out, as reported in Hebrew here
http://www.news1.co.il/Archive/001-D-204315-00.html?tag=10-48-36 ,
on the NEWS 1 web site in Israel, that the good sheikh in question called
upon Arab students at his judenrein lecture to engage in suicide bombings
against Jews and become "shaheeds", or "martyrs", a code word for suicide
bombers.
The one piece of good news in all of this is that it is also reported that
the Council on Higher Education is being called together by the new
Likud Minister of Education to discuss the event and the behavior of the
University of Haifa.
Racism and "Selection" of Jews at the University of Haifa
1. Follow-up on the story of the apartheid Islamofascism coming to the
University of Haifa:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3733099,00.html
*Jewish students banned*
The Jewish students were protesting against the event and the fact that the
university only allowed Arab students to take part in it. A Haifa
Universityofficial said that Salah had not been invited by the
institution and that
there was no legal way to prevent him from coming….
University officials noted that they had reservations over the event and
that they had managed to prevent Salah from visiting the place for several
years, including on the recent Land Day, but that legal advice given to the
university recently stated that it could no longer reject students' requests
to have the Islamic leader lecture to them.
(Can we assume that Holocaust Deniers will be invited soon to the
university? --- SP)
The Students' Union said in a statement that it condemned "any racist act
which includes hatred and a desire to incite. We hope for coexistence, and
such a speech and such a person creates provocations and disrupts the order
within the university's walls. We will not sit idly by as such a serious
incident takes place in our home."
The Union said its members had only found out about the events on Wednesday
because the invitations were written in Arabic. They estimated that had they
known about the event earlier, the number of protestors would have been much
higher.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1245184858845&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
*Raed Salah gives lecture at Haifa U.*
Jun. 17, 2009
Abe Selig , THE JERUSALEM POST
University of Haifa students clashed with security officers Wednesday
afternoon while protesting a highly charged speech given to a group of
Muslim students by the leader of the Islamic Movement's northern branch,
Sheikh Raed Salah.
Outraged over both Salah's words and the fact that Jewish students were
barred from entering the auditorium as he spoke, some 150 protesters
gathered outside the auditorium waving Israeli flags and yelling "This is
not Teheran."
Speaking about the idea of making concessions in Jerusalem, Salah told the
crowd, "We love life, our families, our homes and our children, but if they
suggest that we give up our principles and holy sites, we would rather die
and we welcome death."
He also claimed that Israel is constantly digging tunnels under the Temple
Mount and that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was planning to rebuild the
Temple.
Students clashed with the security officers outside, as chants of "*Allah
hu-akbar*" came from the auditorium in response to Raed's remarks. Police
were dispatched to the scene but not required to intervene.
University officials said they were unhappy with the event and that they had
managed to prevent Salah from visiting the institution for several years,
but that recently the university's lawyers had said it could no longer
reject students' requests to have the Islamic leader lecture to them.
Addressing the Jewish students' claims, university officials said that they
had banned entry to the event so as to prevent disturbances.
"In previous events as well, in which [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman
and [former Defense Minister Shaul] Mofaz gave lectures, we barred the Arab
students from entering," one of the officials said.
In a statement, the Students' Union said that it condemned, "any racist act
which includes hatred and a desire to incite. We hope for coexistence, and
such a speech and such a person creates provocations and disrupts the order
within the university's walls. We will not sit idly by as such a serious
incident takes place in our home."
2. The WAFA news service of the Palestinian terrorists has announced it is
launching a news service in Hebrew, so that its messages of terrorism and
anti-Semitism can reach Hebrew readers. The story is here:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1093862.html
You can se their page in Hebrew here: http://hebrew.wafa.ps/
Only one thing confusing here. The Palestinian terrorists ALREADY have
their own Hebrew language propaganda service. It is called Haaretz.
3.
http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2009/06/not-joke-peta-sends-obama-humane-fly.html
NOT A JOKE--->PETA Sends Obama a Humane Fly Catcher
4. The "Hebrew" … "University"
5. Ben Gurion University far-leftist David Newman (political science,
sidekick of Neve Gordon) prettifies and rationalizes the anti-Israel
boycott:
6. One-sided brainwashing and denunciation of freedom of speech at Ben
Gurion University:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Yitzhak%20Klein%20-%20academic%20freedom%20conference%20at%20BGU.htm
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/apartheid-comes-to-university-of-haifa.html
Judenrein at the University of Haifa:
The Jerusalem Post June 17 reports
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1245184858845&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
):
"Islamic Movement leader Sheikh Raed Salah gave a talk to Arab students at
Haifa University on Wednesday, while Jewish students were not allowed into
the lecture hall.".
Salah is the head of the Islamofascist "Islamic Movement" in Northern
Israel. Arab students invited him to speak at the University of Haifa.
The Haifa chiefs did nothing to stop him coming. They also did nothing
to stop the Nazi-like "selection" that prevented Jewish students from
entering the lecture hall where the Islamofascist was speaking.
What will be next at the University of Haifa. Spot inspections in the
corridors of the noses of students to weed out the Jews?
To whom can you complain?
University of Haifa:
President of the University of Haifa
Prof. Aaron Ben-Ze.ev
University of Haifa
Mt Carmel, 31905 Haifa Israel
Tel: 972-4-8240101
Fax: 972-4-8240281
E-mail: abenzeev@univ.haifa.ac.il
Rector of the University of Haifa
Prof. Yossi Ben-Artzi
University of Haifa
Mt Carmel, 31905 Haifa Israel
Tel: 972-4-8240405
Fax: 972-4-8342101
Email: yossib@univ.haifa.ac.il
Chairman of the Board of Governors
Mr. Leon Charney
Law Office of Leon H. Charney
Broadway 1441
New York, NY 10018
Phone: 212-819-0994
E-mail: charney@lhcharney.com
University "Friends of" Offices Outside Israel are listed here:
http://www.haifa.ac.il/html/html_eng/friends.htm
Two Peoples"
The Silly and Harmful Fantasy of "Two States for Two Peoples"
By Steven Plaut
Those who support the "Two States for Two Peoples" doctrine, and I
suppose that now one must even include Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu in
that category, no matter how reluctantly he joined it, have a very simple
position. Indeed, the entire "Two States for Two Peoples" doctrine can be
summed up in one simple idea, in fact in onXye simple sentence. It is
this:
maybe after the Palestinians get their own state, then they will agree to live
in peace with Israel. No matter how complex and "scholarly" is any article
or position paper that supports "Two States for Two Peoples" doctrine, once
one clears away the verbiage it all boils down to that one simple idea.
To put it even more strongly, no one who is currently promoting "Two
States for Two Peoples" would still be promoting it if they could be
persuaded beyond all doubt that the Palestinians would NOT live in peace after
getting their own state under "Two States for Two Peoples," or if they
discovered with certainty that the second of those states ("Palestine")
would be used for nothing other than terrorist aggression. Well, almost no one
would. In the increasingly anti-Semitic Left around the world and even at the
margins of the Israeli Far Left there are already people arguing that Israel
should agree to "Two States for Two Peoples" even if it is totally clear
and obvious that "Palestine" will be used for nothing besides terrorist
aggression against Israel. They support that idea because they think that
creating a Palestinian state is the right thing to do no matter how destructive
it will be and no matter how disastrous for Israel will be the consequences of
its creation. The more honest far Leftists defend this position by admitting
that they want Israel annihilated and all of its Jews thrown into the sea.
Today to promote "Two States for Two Peoples" requires a bit of
cognitive dissonance. After all, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, turning
it over to the "Palestinian Authority," and the whole world saw the
consequences. They included 8000 rocket missiles aimed at Jewish civilians
inside Israel. So those who insist that the Palestinian will desire to live in
peace once they have their own state are about as consistent and credible as
are people who argue that North Korea and Iran will seek genuine peace once
they get nuclear weapons, or those that once insisted that Hitler would be
satisfied once he gets the Sudetenland.
But more generally, the whole "Two States for Two Peoples" campaign is
nothing more than a special case of the "Then Maybe they Will" doctrine.
For the past 30 years the Israeli political establishment has been prisoner to
the "Then Maybe They Will" doctrine. Every major policy decision made by the
government has reflected the power of wishful thinking and faith in the
make-pretend. Here is a brief recapitulation of the doctrine:
If Israel gives Sinai back to the Egyptians, THEN MAYBE THEY WILL stop the
Nazi-like anti-Semitic propaganda in their state-run media.
If Israel agrees to limited autonomy for Palestinians, THEN MAYBE THEY WILL
stop seeking Israel's destruction and the world will not try to set up an
independent Palestinian Arab terror state.
If Israel provides the Palestinian Authority with arms and funds, THEN
MAYBE THEY WILL not be used for terrorist atrocities against Israel.
If Israel grants its Arab citizens affirmative action preferences, THEN
MAYBE THEY WILL stop cheering terrorists and seeking the annihilation of Israel
and its Jewish population.
If Israel frees thousands of jailed Palestinian terrorists, THEN MAYBE THEY
WILL renounce violence and not murder any more Jews.
If Israel agrees to hold talks with representatives of the PLO, THEN MAYBE
THEY WILL put a stop to Palestinian terrorism.
If Israel allows the Palestinians to hold elections, THEN MAYBE THEY WILL
not elect Hamas.
If the Palestinians elect Hamas, THEN MAYBE THEY WILL not pursue a program
of aggression and terrorism against Israel.
If Israel holds talks with terrorists, THEN MAYBE THEY WILL renounce their
genocidal ambitions and seek peace.
If Israel conducts a unilateral withdrawal from all of southern Lebanon and
allows Hezb'allah terrorists to station rockets on the border, THEN MAYBE
THEY WILL not launch any of them.
If Israel sits back while the Syrians exert their hegemony over Lebanon,
THEN MAYBE THEY WILL rein in Hezb'allah and stop border attacks on Israel.
If Israel refrains from retaliating against Hezb'allah terrorists after
they murder captive Israeli soldiers in cold blood, THEN MAYBE THEY WILL not
seek to kidnap any more soldiers.
If Israel agrees to one cease-fire after another with the Arabs, THEN MAYBE
THE ARABS WILL eventually comply with one.
If Israel allows Arabs in Israel to build illegally, including on public
lands, THEN MAYBE THEY WILL become pro-Israel and moderate.
If Israel agrees to the stationing of UN troops in Lebanon, THEN MAYBE
THEY WILL actually do something to stop terror attacks on Israel.
If Israel ignores Hezb'allah border violations, THEN MAYBE THEY WILL come
to an end.
If Israel lets the Muslims control the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, THEN
MAYBE THEY WILL respond with friendship and moderation.
If Israel expels all Jews from Gaza as a gesture of friendship to the
Palestinians, THEN MAYBE THEY WILL reciprocate with friendship toward the Jews.
If Israel turns the Gaza Strip over to the Palestinians, THEN MAYBE THEY
WILL not use it as a base for terror attacks against Israel.
If Israel turns the other cheek after Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza, THEN
MAYBE THEY WILL stop being fired.
If Israel allows the Palestinian Authority to control parts of the West
Bank, THEN MAYBE THE PALESTINIANS WILL not fire rockets at Jews the same way
they do from Gaza.
If Israel returns the Golan Heights to Syria THEN MAYBE THE SYRIANS WILL
seek peace and reject the idea of using the Heights to attack Israel again.
If Israel agrees to place its neck in the Oslo/Road Map/Saudi Plan noose,
THEN MAYBE THE ARABS WILL not pull the rope.
If Israel officially agrees in principle to let the Palestinians have a
state, THEN MAYBE THEY WILL abandon their agenda of annihilating Israel.
*Tel-Aviv University – Daniel Bar-Tal (Dept of Psychology) reveals new
gospel – Zionism is the main obstacle to peace*
*Would you buy a research from an academic who uses it merely to reinforce
his own ideological prejudice? From somebody who thinks that the Second
Intifada was actually provoked by Israel? From a man who believes that
Zionism is the mother of all evil? And from the same lecturer who wants to
silence his critics by complaining to the university authorities. From Tel
Aviv University psychologist comes:*
*It's the Zionists, stupid!*
By Alon Ben Shaul A new anti-Jewish gospel was revealed to us mortals
recently from the enlightened Left encamped within Tel-Aviv University. It
is this: for peace to be achieved in the Middle East, the Israelis must
recognize their responsibility for the "tragedy" that they inflicted upon
the Palestinians in 1948. As long as the Israelis deny their collective
guilt for the Palestinians becoming refugees and deny that the Palestinians
were maliciously expelled by them, then all reconciliation is a pipe dream.
Hence, Israel's acknowledging Arab "suffering" is a key to reaching a
settlement in the region. Embracing Zionist "dogma" is, accordingly the main
obstacle to peace. In short, "holding such a Zionist narrative serves as an
obstacle to peace since it promotes negative emotions, mistrust,
de-legitimization and negative stereotypes of Arabs and Palestinians." The
author of those words is Daniel Bar-Tal, a University of Tel-Aviv Professor
of Educational Psychology. No wonder. He (jointly with his colleague Rafi
Nets-Zehngut) is behind what he himself considers "pioneering research" into
the Jewish collective memory of 1948. His conclusion was: "Israeli Jews'
consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege
mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness,
dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their
suffering…" Bar-Tal
laments the fact that his study shows that most Israelis accept the
'official version' (or "narrative") of the conflict's history with the
Palestinians, the one where the Jews are the victims of Arab terrorism,
genocidal aggression and hatred. "Most of the nation retains a simplistic
collective memory of the conflict, a black-and-white memory that portrays us
in a very positive light and the Arabs in a very negative one…" 1 But
Bar-Tal has a new "revelation" based on a biased public opinion survey that
he conducted. In it he finds surprising self-denunciatory attitudes on the
part of Israeli Jews regarding Israel's ongoing conflict with Arabs and
Palestinians. With regard to the main historical event of the conflict - the
1948 Palestinian exodus – Bar-Tal reports: "39% of Israeli Jews surveyed
believe expulsion by Israel was one of the factors leading to that exodus,
in addition to Palestinian fear and the call of Arabs/Palestinian leaders to
leave." (In reality, 39% of those he surveys say isolated instances of
forced expulsion of Arabs played some role in the Palestinian flight
from Israel,
among many other factors.) This finding is a source of satisfaction for
Bar-Tal and his co-researcher and they explain: "The fact that we found this
memory of the conflict to be somewhat critical (even though the conflict is
still going on) is encouraging. It suggests that the Israeli-Jewish society
has changed to become more critical, open and self-reflective, allowing it
to adopt less biased narratives."2 Bar-Tal, true to the familiar rhetoric of
the Tel Aviv Leftist clique, believes that expressing Israeli "guilt" over
the 1948 events offers a remedy for the future. In his opinion, the fact
that 39% of Israeli Jews supposedly believe in the "expulsion theory" proves
that they are self-critical and feel evil and guilty. But it is clear as day
that the formulation of the question in the survey was totally flawed. Even
if 39% of Israelis indeed believe that some "expulsion" was a component of
the Palestinian exodus, one should have asked them to elaborate. After all,
many would have said that some cases of "expulsion" were inevitable, since
the alternative was a total annihilation of the *Yishuv*, the Jewish
population of pre-state Israel. They may have also added that cases of
"expulsion" were responses to the war that was waged against the Jewish
Community by the belligerent and aggressive Arab firepower. The
"researchers" write that Israelis think that instances of "expulsion" were
"one of the factors" leading to that exodus, "in addition to Palestinian
fear and the call of the Arab/Palestinian leaders to leave." One of the
factors, along with things like disruption of food supplies and fear of
being caught in the crossfire? In other words, these 39% of Israelis
actually claim there were a host of reasons for the Palestinians becoming
refugees, and cases of "expulsion" were only one of them. So why is it that
the "expulsion theory" response is separated out and celebrated by Bar-Tal
in complete divorce from these other factors? In other words, how can this
survey be taken seriously by any social scientist? As it turns out, in the
survey itself (in which only 500 people participated), only 8% of Israelis
said they believe the Palestinian refugees were in the main "expelled" by
the Jews That figure was added to Bar-Tal's magical "39%," the people who
said some instances of expulsion did take place, and the total sum of 47%
became the headline for a press release issued by the "researchers." That
headline was picked up by the Columbia Teachers College in New York, where
Nets-Zehngut is doing his PhD, and has been very widely quoted in the media
ever since. It typically reads: "Study Surprisingly Finds 47% of
Israeli-Jews believe that the 1948 Palestinian Refugees were expelled by
Israel." But the survey responses were intentionally manipulated and
distorted by these "academics," no doubt for purposes of serving their
ideological agenda. Needless to say, Bar-Tal himself did not conduct any
survey among the Palestinians. One can only assume that 100% of those who
live in Gaza, Nablus and Jaffa would reject the "Zionist narrative" and
blame Israel entirely for creating the refugee problem. No doubt the vast
majority would say that the Jews have no right at to any land in the Middle
East. However, Bar-Tal and his crowd never bother to collect surveys of
Palestinians or other Arabs. That way he never has to blame them for being
an "obstacle to peace." He also intentionally overlooks the fact that his
own survey shows that 41% of Israelis accept the "Zionist narrative" in full
and reject the claim that even some instances of partial expulsion of
Palestinians took place in 1948. These people say that there is one and only
one reason for the Palestinians becoming refugees and that is that they fled
at their leaders' behest and on their own accord. This finding depresses
Bar-Tal and he wrings his hands over it. The lesson he draws from it is that
the Israeli public has not changed its reactionary racist views, even in the
aftermath of the last military Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. "Is it any
wonder," he asks, "that the same public also buys the establishment
explanation of the operation in Gaza?" *The "truth" about Camp David* Bar-Tal
has a habit of placing the onus for continuing Middle East hostilities upon
Israel in his "research" and media interviews. Parts of his survey addressed
the failure of the Camp David summit in spring 2000. Bar-Tal notes the "hard
line" that was taken by Israeli Jews: " 56% believe that Yasser Arafat
declined a very generous peace offer by Ehud Barak because he did not want
peace with Israel, versus only 25% who believe both parties were responsible
for the failure and 3% who believed that Barak was responsible." In other
words, 56% of Israelis dared to tell the truth in their response to his
questions! But in the same paragraph in the same press release about his own
"pioneering work," the Bar-Tal turns our attention to another historical
event. The researchers report that 60% of those surveyed replied that in the
1947 United Nations' partition plan of the Land of Israel/Palestine, the
Palestinians received an equal or larger part of the territory, relative to
their percentage of its population. However, they remind us, "The facts are
that the partition plan, which was rejected by the Palestinians, offered
them (about 2/3 of the total population then) a smaller part of the
territory (only 44%)." Benjamin Disraeli would have called this lying with
statistics. The professor wants to tell us that the Israelis have no
knowledge of their own history, hence their negative bigoted attitude to
their enemies. And their "ignorance" over the Partition Plan is a proof. But
the inevitable conclusion that any informed reader will draw is that Bar-Tal
is simply twisting the facts. In doing so he shows that he lacks all shred
of academic integrity. It also shows how his "survey" was conducted with no
measure of good faith. They try to give the impression that if the Jewish
population of 1948 or Yishuv was offered a territory that was smaller than
the one offered to the Palestinian-Arabs, the latter would have accepted it
and the conflict would have been avoided. The truth, as we all know, is that
the Arabs rejected any territorial compromise or any sort, while the Jews
were willing to embrace any stretch of land on which they could have a
homeland. Moreover, the Arabs were opposed the existence of any Jewish
community in Palestine, as they demonstrated by perpetuating the massacres
of the 1920s and 1930s. And what about the fact that the land offered to
Israel was the least fertile and was not heavily populated by Arabs?
Finally, Bar-Tal takes as the defining demographic balance that which was
in place in November of 1947, when the UN passed its partition proposal. But
that partition was designed to create a Jewish state into which millions of
homeless refugees could be absorbed. The Arabs already had a large number of
oppressive undemocratic states in their control and had no moral claim at
all for getting one more in the Land of Israel. The Bar-Tal study also found
that older Israelis and more religious ones are more likely to believe what
they call the "Zionist narrative." Furthermore, those supporting the
"Zionist narrative" were significantly less likely to support peace
agreements with the Palestinians and Syria, "pointing to the important role
of collective memory in conflicts." In addition, a strong connection was
found between the collective memory of "past Jewish persecution" (regarding
anti-Semitism and the Holocaust) and understanding of the conflict. People
holding a strong memory of Jewish persecution are much more likely to adopt
the "Zionist narrative." This memory of persecution is discussed as one of
the determinants of Israel's evil conduct in the conflict. In other words,
holding the "Zionist narrative" is a recipe for intransigence and serves as
an obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Zionism, especially when it is
based on Jewish history, is THE problem. And as long as its believers do not
abandon Zionism and cure themselves of it, the conflict will continue. *Those
terrible TERRIBLE Israelis…*
No one would mistake Bar-Tal for a serious scholar, but he has been a
consistent one. He was obsessed with the evils of Zionism throughout his
academic career. Long ago he published a study of 124 textbooks used by
Israeli elementary, middle and high schools in Israel from the 1950s through
1970s. He found them "supremacist and racist." He claimed that Arabs in
these books were associated with* "primitiveness, inferiority, cruelty,
brutality, untrustworthiness, fanaticism, treacherousness and
aggressiveness."* *3* They were also described as *"murderers," "rioters,"
"deviate," "cruel," "immoral," "unfair," "robbers," "killers,"
"bloodthirsty" "suspicious," "unenlightened," "fatalistic," "unproductive,"
"apathetic," "tribal," "vengeful," "exotic," "poor," "sick," "dirty,"
"noisy," "colored" and "easily inflamed*." The Jews were portrayed as
*"industrious,"
"brave" and determined to cope with the difficulties of improving the
country in ways they believe the Arabs are incapable of."* Bar-Tal has never
bothered to conduct any study of Arab textbooks or what they say about Jews.
Bar-Tal's "research" on school stereotypes was seized by the *Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs*,*4* which published an interview with the
author about the study under the headline "Israeli Textbooks and Children's
Literature Promote Racism and Hatred toward Palestinians and Arabs.".
Bar-Tal told the writer, Maureen Meehan, "*This attitude served to justify
the return of the Jews, implying that they care enough about the country to
turn the swamps and deserts into blossoming farmland; this effectively
delegitimizes the Arab claim to the same land*," He also added that *"the
message was that the Palestinians were primitive and neglected the country
and did not cultivate the land."*
In his book, "Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: Representations of
Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society" (co-written with Yona Teichman), he
maintained that the Middle East conflict is kept alive by the stereotypes
that the Israelis hold about the Arabs (but not the other way around!),
while providing no evidence of this.*5* More tellingly, the book ignores the
naked incitements and blood libels that exist in Palestinian schoolbooks, a
subject that has been widely discussed during the Oslo process. The Arab
revival of the *Protocols of the Elders of Zion*, their embracing *Der
Sturmer-style* propaganda, and their calls for genocide are all absent from
their book. The authors also refrain from exposing readers to what is so
widespread in the Arab media – the demonization of Jews as those who
supposedly spread AIDS by using prostitutes, poison wells, shoot depleted
uranium to cause infertility, drink children's blood for Passover,
contaminate food, and so on. While not even mentioning Arab cartoons,
Bar-Tal and sidekick prefer to ignore the simple fact that Israel is under
constant existential threat. Bar-Tal argues that these images are designed
merely to raise a sense of fear and insecurity among the Israeli Jews.
With a similar approach in 2007, he analyzed the role of the Gadna "youth
corps" (preparatory course for teenagers before joining the army), and after
studying its pre-military training described it as "unduly militaristic." The
new Gadna program includes training in squad-sized operations, night treks
and shooting, designed to prepare young Israeli boys and girls before they
become IDF conscripts. However, Bar-Tal said in an interview that *"one gets
the impression that the program was prepared in the 1950s, in the previous
century.* *It perpetuates a security-minded outlook."* By that he meant
something not good. His colleague, Matanya Ben Artzi, a far-leftist
professor of mathematics from the Hebrew University, called it a "takeover
by the army of the high school" and "wiping out of the values of an entire
generation."*6*
*Gaza? It's not what you think…* Bar-Tal draws a direct line between Haifa,
1948 to Gaza, 2008, raising the suspicion that all his references to the
"Zionist dogma" are actually attempts at undermining the legitimacy of
Israel. His "pioneering research study," (dealing with Israeli Jews' memory
of the conflict with the Arabs "from its inception to the present," as he
describes it) coincided with the recent battle in Gaza. The sweeping Israeli
support for "Operation Cast Lead" discouraged Bar-Tal and convinced him that
Israelis are little more than warmongering thugs, and "that this public
would exchange the drums of war for the cooing of doves." This professor of
educational psychology from Tel Aviv University goes on to say that the
Jewish memory contains "collective emotions such as fear, hatred and anger,
turns into a psycho-social infrastructure of the kind experienced by nations
that have been involved in a long-term violent conflict. This infrastructure
gives rise to the culture of conflict in which we and the Palestinians are
deeply immersed, fanning the flames and preventing progress toward
peace."Bar-Tal claims that, in such a situation, it is hard even to
imagine a
possibility that the two nations will be capable of overcoming their
psychological obstacles without outside help. Bar-Tal believes that
Israeli-Jewish society is at fault and that it has a significant way to go
in "changing its collective memory to become less biased and self serving."
In his opinion many Israeli Jews still believe a Zionist narrative about
many issues in the history of the conflict – which he claims is a simplistic
memory of the conflict which portrays Israelis in a positive light and the
Arabs/Palestinians in a negative one. In other words, holding the Zionist
narrative is the source of the problem and if the Israeli citizens do not
change their DNA, the conflict will stay with us for ever. Never mind that
the Zionist "narrative" is the truth and that the anti-Zionist "narrative"
is a collection of lies and distortions.
Bar-Tal finds another link between 1948 and 2008: he thinks that the Israeli
public did not mature enough since the establishment of its state and so it
is as easy to brainwash it about the Palestinian exodus as it as about the
recent military operation in Gaza. In an article published in the virulently
anti-Israel *Kibush* website he accuses his fellow Israelis of "blind
patriotism," holding a "desire for vengeance" and "self-righteousness."*7*
The Gaza military operation, he believed, was motivated by *"the wish to
erase the feeling of failure in the Second Lebanese War during the summer of
2006; they reflect a deep sense of collective victimhood because of the
continuous firing of rockets on civilian settlements in the south by the
Hamas military organ*. *This sense of victimhood led to the urge to revenge
in order to punish for the harm done and prevent further firing. In
addition, they are derived from the continuous dehumanization of the Hamas
organization. Finally, they are based on the conviction that Israel withdrew
from the Gaza Strip in 2005, allowing Palestinians to live their lives and
they instead engage in terror."*
Bar-Tal argues that Middle East reality is much more complex than the
"narrative perpetuated by the Israeli political and military establishments,
which successfully constructed the beliefs of the Jewish public in Israel."
In his opinion, most Israeli Jews do not know that originally Hamas was
founded by the Israeli authorities (a completely false claim) to provide an
alternative to the national movement of PLO; or that Hamas is a
religious-fundamental movement that also provides welfare, health and
educational services to civilians (so did the German Nazi Party); or that
Hamas was elected democratically (with the insistence of USA) to lead the
government of the Palestinian authority because of Fatah corruption (So
what?).
In fact Bar-Tal's factual errors fail to dislodge his intense sense of
superiority to his ignorant fellow countrymen. Does the fact that Hamas also
tries to extend its control over Palestinians via civilian services somehow
serve to legitimize it as something other than a genocidal terrorist group?
Does the fact that Hamas supports the widows of suicide bombers or supplies
the mosques with Koran books, makes it some sort of humanitarian NGO? Hamas
may have been "democratically" elected in elections with no freedom of
speech nor of the press and overflowing with violence, but Bar-Tal fails to
mention the fact that the international community refuses to recognize it
because of its policy. That includes unwillingness to renounce violence,
honor past agreements and recognize Israel.
While claiming that the unilateral disengagement from Gaza was done to
delegitimize the Palestinian Authority, Bar-Tal goes on to adopt Palestinian
propaganda as is, by saying that "Gaza has been turned into one big prison"
since the IDF controls its borders. Just how Israel, which removed not only
its soldiers from Gaza but also its civilians, is "imprisoning" Gazans is
unclear. What really upsets Bar-Tal is that Israel has the nerve to prevent
Gazans from entering Israel and murdering Israelis. And while mentioning in
passing the Gazan rocket attacks against Israeli citizens, Bar-Tal asserts
that the smuggling tunnels into Gaza through which the weapons were brought
were built *"mainly to smuggle civil goods that could not be brought to Gaza
and not only weapons as the great majority believe." *And Pearl Harbor was
bombed because the Japanese desired American fast food.
Indeed one can only marvel at Bar-Tal's skills at producing disinformation
when he says that *"few of the Israeli Jews recognize that Israel during two
years had at least two alternative strategies to prevent further escalation;
either to talk with Hamas which is possible and negotiate long-term
cease-fire, or take decisive actions of peace..."* And if you raise an
eyebrow, he will add that *"most of the Israeli Jews do not know that it was
possible to negotiate continuation of the cease fire with Hamas and do not
remember that it was Israel who broke the ceasefire of November 4, 2008,
killing 6 Palestinians."*
One wonders if the writer's tendency towards baseless fantasies derives from
his wishful thinking. Back in reality, it was Hamas that has declared so
often that it would never negotiate with Israel, let alone recognize its
right to exist. It was Hamas that refused to prolong the ceasefire
agreement, to the dismay of the Palestinian Authority and the fury of Egypt.
But Bar-Tal is adamant. Bar-Tal loves to use the phrase "extremists on both
sides,"*8* as if Jewish suicide bombers are roaming free on the Israeli
side. While admitting that Hamas is not his cup of tea, "as it is a
fundamentalist religious organization that practices also terrorism," he
insists that it is not a homogenous movement. As such, *"it is possible to
hear in it different voices including ones that support negotiation with
Israel and acceptance of the two state solution." *Sure, like in Nazi
Germany and Stalinist Russia.
Mysteriously and perhaps clinically, Bar-Tal hears voices that do not reach
the ears of others. He thinks that Israeli society is too embedded in the
conflict to be exposed to voices of peace reaching out to it from Gaza,
those same imaginary voices he hears. By the same token, he alleges, even
the blame for the failure of the Camp David summit should be placed, fairly
and squarely, on the Jews' shoulders. And even if Arafat had his faults, it
is Israel that supposedly is holding almost all the cards to resolve the
conflict, since it *"occupies the land, holds Eastern Jerusalem, controls
the life of the Palestinians, controls the resources of the West Bank,
expands constantly the Jewish settlements on the West Bank, exercises
preventive and punishing violent acts according to its own will and has
almost unconditional backing of* *the superpower."*
*Watch out! McCarthyism!*
One might assume that, despite these views, it is still possible for honest
people to conduct debate with "academics" like Bar-Tal. One would be wrong.
What Bar-Tal wants is to monopolize the entire public arena of debate for
people holding his own views. And he wants to achieve this by gagging
others. He seeks to silence his opponents. He wants the exclusive right to
smear those with whom he disagrees, while denying people of other ideologies
the freedom to express them. It so happened that after publishing his
"interim report" about his "collective memory" survey, the good Professor
Daniel Bar-Tal had the audacity to send a letter to his colleagues, in which
he warned them of a witchunt against them. He was referring to "the growing
monitoring activities of NGOs that follow what they call "anti-Israeli"
publications and other academic events by the Israelis." He also alerted
them to "the participation in our social sciences' network of individuals
who use unaccepted language to delegitimize academia staff and activities
that they oppose politically." Finally, he demanded that university
officials take disciplinary sanctions against faculty members who cooperate
with "monitoring groups" that expose political bias among Israeli academic
radicals.
Bar-Tal demanded censorship, so "*that these two examples should not be
tolerated in our society as they signal McCarthyism and other ugly trends
that should not appear in democratic societies."*
Bar-Tal has no interest in honest debate. He proposed the following
proposals for censorship and suppression of points of view with which he
disagrees:
I quote:
*1. The social science network should not publish messages that use
derogative language with the purpose to delegitimize individuals and groups
that act within the framework of the law and academic norms.*
*2. We should condemn the use of such language as well as monitoring
activities of the academia in Israel or elsewhere.*
*3. We should bring to light acts that aim at monitoring and limiting free
and opened academic activities in the Israeli and the international mass
media.*
*4. We should demand that formal academic bodies such as Senates of the
Universities, VERA (forum of university presidents) and the Academy of
Science condemn these types of activities.*
*If we will not act to stop these and other similar activities, but play the
role of passive bystanders, they may hurt eventually each of us, destroy the
Israeli Academia, and hurt the society."** End of quote.*
So Daniel Bar-Tal demands freedom of expression for himself while demanding
that it be denied to others. He does not like his own biases and
pseudo-research to be monitored or exposed or criticized. He thinks that
freedom of speech should be limited to critics of Zionism and Israel, but
not allowed for critics of those critics.
In fact, he behaves exactly as a juvenile who fails to win some argument and
then insists that his opponent be punished. Otherwise, why does he seek the
intervention of the academic institutions and call on them to discipline
critics of critics? And what does he mean by stating that these NGO's
"destroy Israeli academia?" Doesn't amateurish pseudo-research destroy
Israeli academia?
And who should be considered more guilty of trying to destroy Israeli
academia than those who call for an international academic boycott against
the country's universities? But those are the sorts of measures that do not
trouble Professor Bar-Tal.
--------------------------------
*Footnotes*
1. That study is funded by a grant awarded by the IRPA (International Peace
Research Association) Foundation to Nets-Zehngut, who came up with the idea
to research this topic. It was conducted among a representative sample of
500 Israeli Jews through Dialog, an Israeli center for public opinion
research. The questions in the survey examined the collective memory
regarding 25 major issues associated with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict,
ranging from the late 19th century to the beginning of the 21at centaury.
Press Release issued by Teachers College in New York on 6 April 2009.
2. For more information, visit the college's Web site at www.tc.columbia.edu.
Learn
3. The damaging report found its way into the digital dictionary Wikipedia
under "Israeli Textbook Controversy."
4. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. September 1999. Pages 19-20.
5. Daniel Bar-Tal and Yona Teichman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005
6. (Ha'aretz, 1.1.2007)
7. Kibush.co.il, (January 31, 2009).
8. CounterPunch, 22 April, 2002.
(see web page for links and photos)
Political Extremism and Nazi Salutes on the Hebrew University Campus
To Left (double meaning) - the new look for Hebrew University leftism?
The Hebrew University just elected for itself a new president, Dr.
Menachem Ben-Sasson, who used to be a Knesset backbencher from the Kadima
Party.
His nomination comes not only in the midst of a financial crisis for the
Hebrew University but also in the middle of a growing crisis of identity.
The seriousness of that crisis was made evident yesterday when a group of
leftist and Arab students on the campus, no doubt with the blessings of
radical anti-Israel professors, gave Nazi salutes to pro-Israel students
singing Hatikva and "Jerusalem of Gold." The story is reported in the
Jerusalem Post today, here.
Like the other liberal arts secular universities in Israel (Tel Aviv
University, Ben Gurion University, and my own University of Haifa), much
of higher education in Israel has been converted by these institutions
into leftist indoctrination and anti-Israel anti-Zionist "re-education."
There are entire departments in which no non-leftist or Zionist may teach.
Classrooms, especially in the social sciences, law, education, and
humanities, are often turned into little camps for North-Korean-style
extremist propagandizing. Incompetent pseudo-academics whose entire
academic records consist of anti-Israel propagandizing get hired, tenured,
and promoted, while dissident Zionist faculty sometimes have their careers
sabotaged. Professors preach ideology in class instead of engaging in
research and scholarship, and that ideology is invariably post-modernist
anti-Israel Marxist radicalism. (The non-radicals seldom use their
classrooms for political indoctrination. My own students do not have the
foggiest idea of what my own political opinions are unless they google me
on their own!)
The politicalization of the Israeli campus and the misbehavior of Hebrew
University radical faculty are documented in detail at the web site of the
Isracampus watchdog group here. Isracampus is a group initiative based in
part on the legendary Campus Watch watchdog that operated in the United
States, set up by the courageous Dr. Daniel Pipes.
Politicalization and radicalization of the faculty at the Hebrew
University is about as bad as it is anywhere in Israel, and worse even
than that on many American campuses. The whole collection of reports on
Hebrew University extremism assembled by Isracampus appears here.
The Hebrew University record ranges from faculty members justifying
anti-Israel terrorism, to other calling for an end to Israel's existence.
It includes faculty members being arrested for engaging in illegal and
violent behavior. It contains track records of numerous Hebrew University
faculty members smearing Israel and Zionism, denouncing Israel as an
apartheid peace-hating state, one that carries out horrific Nazi-like war
crimes for the heck of it.
Anti-Israel students at the Hebrew university are probably much more rare
than are anti-Israel faculty members, and there are probably less people
in all of Eastern Europe who believe in socialism than there are on the
faculty of the Hebrew University.
Nevertheless the growing anti-Israel faculty extremism there is having an
impact, and the parading of leftist and Arab students on the Hebrew
University's campus giving the Nazi salute in the middle of the meetings
of the school's Board of Governors is disturbing evidence of this.
To right - Hebrew U's new Prez. He has his work cut out for him!
Nazi salutes cause row at Hebrew U.
Jun. 10, 2009
abe selig , THE JERUSALEM POST
A student organization that promotes Zionism on campus is fuming after its
members were given the Nazi salute by left-wing students during student
elections at the Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus last week.
Members of the Im Tirtzu (If You Will It) group said that as they made
their rounds on last Tuesday, singing songs and waving the national flag,
a member of another student organization - Campus L'kulanu (Campus For
All) - approached them and made the stiff-arm Nazi salute as they passed.
"We were walking by, singing songs like "Am Yisrael Hai" and "Yerushalaim
Shel Zahav," and she stood nearby making the salute," said Amit Barak, the
deputy director of Im Tirtzu, who sent a letter concerning the incident to
the university's President Menachem Magidor and a number of Knesset
members.
"Later in the day, another member of their group did the same thing,"
Barak said. "He approached us and made the salute - it was shocking, and a
lot of other students, who aren't members of either organization, where
looking on in horror."
"Later on, other members of their group also tried to block our path as we
were walking," he continued. "It was all very provocative, and I could
tell they were trying to provoke a violent reaction."
Campus L'kulanu, which is made up of students who support the Meretz and
Hadash political parties, among others, did not offer an explanation on
Tuesday. One member declined comment, saying he had not been on campus
during the incident, while phone calls from The Jerusalem Post to members
who were on campus that day were not returned.
In a written response, however, a Hebrew University spokeswoman said that
one of the students involved had come to the Dean's Office to apologize
for the incident.
"After receiving the complaint from the Im Tirtzu organization, the
student approached the Dean's Office on his own initiative, and asked to
apologize. The student claimed that his actions were done as an
individual, and he realized it had been a mistake."
Barak said neither he nor his organization had been informed of the
apology, and rejected the idea that the saluting student was "acting
alone."
"I remember both of them," he said. "It was a girl first and then the guy
who's apparently apologized. She was wearing a Campus L'kulanu shirt while
she gave the Nazi salute, I can't remember if he was or not. But it
doesn't matter, they obviously weren't acting alone."
In his letter to Magidor, Barak also said that regardless of any political
point the students may have been trying to make, "the use of Nazi symbols
in a place like Israel, where the Holocaust is still a very sensitive
issue, offends the feelings of many people and is extremely intolerable."
Barak also cited a bill that was proposed in the Knesset in 2007, which
would have prohibited the use of Nazi symbols except for educational,
historical or other informational purposes, or to protest against the
racist nature of Nazism itself. That bill, which was sponsored by
then-Labor MK Colette Avital, wasn't approved, but Barak wrote in his
letter that to the Campus L'kulanu students, it would make little
difference if it had.
"I am sure, regardless of the bill or any other bill like it, these
students would continue to act in an offensive way that expresses such a
lack of values," he wrote.
The Hebrew University itself has come under fire in recent days, as its
annual Board of Governors meeting has drawn increased criticism from
right-wing groups saying professors at the institution are increasingly
anti-Israel.
An ad sponsored by the group Isracampus that appeared in Monday's Post
called on the board of Governors to become aware of "what is really taking
place inside the Hebrew University."
The ad goes on to say that professors and lecturers at the university
"endorse terrorist attacks against Jews, call for international boycotts
against Israel, collaborate with anti-Semites and openly call for Israel's
destruction," among other allegations.
Isracampus did not return e-mails from the Post on Tuesday, but the
university addressed the issue in an e-mail.
"The university will not respond to baseless claims made by organizations
or individuals via paid advertisements that are published in the press,"
it read. "If the university happens to receive any legitimate complaints,
it will handle these accordingly.
"The university is very proud to allow freedom of speech on campus - which
includes the voicing of opinions from across the political spectrum - as
long as it is in accordance with Israeli law."
AGAINST academic freedom and against freedom of speech. Isracampus'
Yitzhak Klein attended. His report on this "conference" appears here:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Yitzhak%20Klein%20-%20academic%20freedom%20conference%20at%20BGU.htm
It is a fascinating document to read in full. Here is a short excerpt,
but please go to the web address to read the report in full:
"The objective of the conference turned out not to be the celebration of
academic freedom, but an attempt to deny academic freedom to critics of
the conference organizers. political views and political activism.
"The Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion, and the
university itself, have good reason to feel threatened by the exercise of
certain forms of academic freedom. The activities of Isracampus and
similar organizations have helped publicize anti-Zionist, anti-Israel
publication, public activism, and classroom indoctrination by Israeli
academics, raising the question whether this represents a legitimate use
of academic freedom or a justifiable use of funding for higher education.
Ben-Gurion University, in particular, has been hard hit by private donors
who curtailed their support when they became aware of anti-Zionist
activity at the institution..
"Reflecting on the Ben Gurion University politics department conference as
a whole, the main messages were two. First, academics. right to be paid to
write and teach what they please, even if destructive, should be regarded
as an automatic entitlement. Post-Zionists are always happy to bring their
views to the public.s attention in newspaper articles and advertisements,
to teach them to their students and to attempt to sway public opinion. The
only people they feel are not entitled to know about their activities are
those who foot the bills. Both private donors and public funders are
supposed to sign their checks behind a veil of ignorance, with no full
picture of how their money is being used. Public political activities and
published writings by extremists should never be cited by anyone, except
those who endorse their extremism. Anybody seeking to enlighten the
general public or university donors should be shut up. In the name free
speech, speech is to be curtailed and information in which the public has
a legitimate interest must be suppressed!"
To keep this email short I am not posting the full piece here but it is
worth reading!
2. The following story is amazing and unique in so many ways that I do
not know how to count them. A leftist Israeli professor teaching in the
United States, long active in "Peace Now" and similar groups, writes a
play that mocks and denounces leftist "Post-Zionist" academics and
self-hating Jewish "intellectuals," a play in which Palestinians are shown
to be blind haters of Jews (even of "progressive" leftist Jews). The play
is to be staged in New York City in its "fringe theater festival." And
to top it off, Haaretz (Hebrew edition only) runs a raving favorable
review of the play and its author!
The academic in question is Doron S. Ben-Atar, who teaches history these
days at Fordham University in New York. He is a very serious academic,
used to be on the faculty at Yale. He is an acclaimed scholar with a
specialization in American history, and in particular writes a lot of
serious things about intellectual property rights, trade secrets, and
related issues.
Ben-Atar grew up in Israel. His father was a Sephardic immigrant from
Turkey. Ben Atar's mother was a Holocaust survivor, who had been in
Auschwitz. Ben-Atar previously wrote and staged a play about his mother.
He was active in Israeli leftist groups before he went to NY to do his PhD
at Columbia University.
Based on his personal experiences he decided to write a play mocking
self-hating Israeli and Jewish leftists. The play is entitled "Peace
Warriors" and it is scheduled to be staged as part of the NY fringe
theater activities (see this:
http://fringenycdata.com/basic_page.php?ltr=P ). The play is about a
group of whiney Jewish "peace" leftists, some ex-Israelis, one British
self-hating Jewish radical, and some leftist American Jews. The Brit is
the villain in the play, and he calls himself GW, based on his original
name of Godfrey Warshevski, although he tells people it is short for
George Washington. He specializes in seducing all the leftist women in
the group.
In the play the whiney leftists spend their days mouthing anti-Israel
slogans and trying to delegitimize Israel. Ben Atar says they are all
based on real leftist academics with whom he has had personal contact.
He describes how was inspired by "dialogues" for peace in which he
participated while at Columbia, where the leftist Jews spilled out their
adoration for the Arabs present and their condemnation of Israel's army
tactics, while the Arabs conducted long debates among themselves as to
whether they should even be speaking with any Jews. He explores in his
play the psychology of self-hating Jewish leftists and Jews who march
around peacocking as proud anti-Zionists. He also mocks Meretz party
activists he knew who were more interested in counting checks than in
anything else.
When Ben-Atar staged his earlier play there was a role for an Arab. She
was played by an Arab woman from Faradeis, near Haifa, who spoke no
English, and she played a woman from the West Bank in the play. When that
play was staged, a Jewish actress translated what the Arab actress was
saying for the audience, but the Arab actress did not trust the Jewess and
insisted that other Arabs be present to check the translating. Both
actresses were supposed to be "peace activists" in real life but the Arab
despised the Jew.
For Hebrew readers, the Haaretz review of all this can be read in Hebrew
at this web address:
http://www.mouse.co.il/CM.articles_item,411,209,36497,.aspx
When asked if it is hard to be a Jew living in America, he answered the
interviewer that NO, it is very easy, in fact TOO easy. What is hard, he
says, is being an Israeli!
2. On Ynet (Hebrew only) at
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3725689,00.html Prof. Dror Zeevi,
who teaches Middle East Studies at Ben Gurion University (where else?)
calls for a Hezbollah victory in the Lebanese "elections" this week. He
claims that being in the Lebanese government will tame Hezbollah and make
it behave responsibly, since it will be unable itself to attack the
Lebanese state apparatus or infrastructure. And just why will a
victorious Hezbollah be unable to attack the Lebanese state and
infrastructure? Because a Ben Gurion University professor thinks so.
4. Israel-hating radical feminists invade Bar-Ilan University:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/other%20-%20Bar%20Ilan%20University%20-%20Orna%20Sasson-Levy%20-%20Befits%20Bir%20Zeit.htm
Two Peoples" started World War II, while destroying Czechoslovakia
Palestinian Irredentism: A Warning from History
by Steven Plaut
Middle East Quarterly
June 1999
http://www.meforum.org/459/palestinian-irredentism-a-warning-from-history
In August 1998, according to press reports, official Israeli analysts met with Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet ministers to discuss what was termed the "potential strategic threat" stemming from the Arab population resident in Israel. Among other things, the report discussed a "worst case scenario" whereby these Israeli Arabs would launch a separatist campaign.1 The report went on to draw explicit comparisons between this threat and the role of Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s.2
The report caused a minor uproar, forcing the government to apologize later and back down from this characterization of Israel's Arab citizens as a potential fifth column. Yet the comparison is an intriguing one, for Israeli Arabs and Sudeten Germans do have much in common, as recent research has established.3 The historic analogy with the Sudetens arises with respect to debate over the real motivations behind demands for Palestinian self-determination, demands sometimes extended to include Israeli Arabs. Does the Sudeten story of six decades back in fact have lessons for today?
BACKGROUND TO THE SUDETEN CRISIS
The modern Czechoslovakian state came into existence in 19184; in the first of many parallels with modern Israel, it was a country recreated after centuries, having been destroyed and absorbed by others over the years. In the Middle Ages, Bohemia and Moravia had been separate Czech kingdoms, enjoying varying degrees of independence, generally within the framework of the Holy Roman Empire. During the Hussite rebellion of the fifteenth century, the Czechs regained their full independence in a heroic armed struggle that pitted the few against the many. Their independence was then to be crushed with finality in 1620, and the Czech lands were absorbed by the Habsburg Empire, while much of the Czech population was dispersed.
Modern Czech nationalism emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century. During World War I, Czechs participated in resistance and espionage against the Axis powers, and their leaders lobbied in European capitals for independence. After centuries of persecution, the Czechs reestablished their sovereignty following World War I and linked up with their Slovakian cousins in the new state of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia occupied a strategically central location; indeed, Bismarck once observed that whoever was master of Bohemia was master of Europe.
Czechoslovakia contained a diverse and heterogeneous population, like the Habsburg Empire from which it emerged. In particular, about 23 percent of its citizens were ethnic Germans, concentrated in the Western section known as the Sudetenland. Most Sudeten Germans were violently opposed to incorporation within the Czechoslovakian state. Instead, they identified openly with larger neighboring countries and fundamentally opposed the very existence of the new state. On October 21, 1918, German deputies from all parts of the former Austrian Empire convened and issued a call for national "self-determination" for the Germans of Czechoslovakia, using the term President Woodrow Wilson had recently added to the international lexicon. In the following year, Sudeten Germans launched a wave of violent demonstrations and terrorism in opposition to the inclusion of their lands in the Czech state. In addition, thousands of Sudeten Germans fled from the new state to the
neighboring countries of Germany and Austria.
In the campaign for Sudeten self-determination, its advocates ignored the fact that the vast majority of Germanic peoples already enjoyed self-determination in the form of Germany and Austria, two states contiguous to the area of Czechoslovakia in dispute. Rather, the advocates accused the Czechs of being "outsiders" who did not belong in the region. As Slavs, the Czechs were portrayed as invaders of Germanic Lebensraum.
The new Czechoslovakia thus included a large element with questionable loyalty to the state. Czechoslovakia was ruled by social democrats committed to social reform and egalitarianism; they made attempts to resolve this problem by winning over the hostile minority through economic integration, tolerance, freedom, and liberal social reform. The first Czechoslovakian president, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, a powerful, strong-willed, charismatic, and progressive politician, proposed a comprehensive program of equality for all national groups in the new state. Indeed, he promoted the integration of the German minority as an ultimate test of his progressive principles.
Accordingly, Czechoslovakia quickly developed in the 1920s into a stable parliamentary democracy with protection for all the freedoms found in modern Western states. A large number of political parties contested elections and gained representation in the parliament. Government coalitions of parties were formed after a great deal of partisan horse-trading. The country passed legislative programs that were among the most progressive in the world. Trade union activism and power bloomed, and widespread experimentation with cooperative agriculture took place.
A pattern of decentralization evolved, where the German minority was permitted to operate its own schools in its own languages and control its own local affairs. German was an official national language in the German areas of Czechoslovakia. Sudeten Germans voted and were elected to parliament.
Still, Sudeten Germans did have some legitimate complaints. They were under-represented in the civil service and armed forces, partly because of security fears. They also experienced some security-related restrictions, particularly during periods of exterior threats and tensions. The issue of land ownership was one of extremist political passion for them. Land owned by Sudeten Germans was expropriated for defense fortifications, as the Sudeten lands were alongside Germanyâ"whence any future military threats would come. (The Third Reich later used these land expropriations as a justification for its military aggression in 1938.) On the whole, the Sudeten Germans probably enjoyed better treatment than any other national minority in Europe.
THIRD REICH AGGRESSION
However, by 1937 the Sudeten Germans found themselves at the center of escalating tensions. The radicalization of nationalist movements in neighboring countries, where power was seized by revolutionary and xenophobic leaders, led to growing international conflict. Specifically, the pan-German ideology and imperialist ambitions of the Third Reich inflamed the Sudeten conflict. Adolf Hitler saw Czechoslovakia as an integral part of the German national homeland, an area to be absorbed and integrated into the Reich. He allowed no room at all for Czechoslovakian self-determination. On March 30, 1938, Hitler wrote in his diary, "It is my irrevocable decision to destroy Czechoslovakia by military means in the near future."5
As international tensions grew, Berlin complained more and more about discrimination and mistreatment of the Sudetens. In response, Sudeten Germans moved away from peaceful coexistence in favor of polarization and extremism. Their patterns shifted as frustration peaked, from the more moderate parties in the 1920s to nationalist parties with totalitarian ideologies in the 1930s. Their growing nationalist movement was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and authoritarian. The Nazi Party was formally banned in Czechoslovakia but support for the Sudeten German Party (SdP), the Nazi surrogate party, soared; in 1935 it received 63 percent of the German vote in Czechoslovakia (a higher percentage than what the Nazis received in Germany in 1933), and 78 percent in 1938.6 The SdP never outlined a political or social program of nation-building beyond demanding "self-determination."
The SdP used violence to suppress other competing nationalist parties and asserted its own position as sole spokesman for the Sudeten Germans. It organized Sudeten refugees who had fled to Germany when Czechoslovakia became independent and recruited them into the Heimatbund, a paramilitary organization. This group later formed the basis of the Sudeten German Freikorps, a terrorist organization to which 34,000 Sudetens living in Germany were recruited. These terrorists raided Czech border areas and carried out atrocities until late 1938. The SdP and other Sudeten political organizations openly identified with the Nazi Party in Germany. Even in the face of escalating violence and provocations by the Sudeten Germans, the Czechoslovak authorities scrupulously maintained freedom of the press.
After coming to power, but especially beginning in 1937, Hitler turned the issue of Sudeten national rights into his main instrument for aggression against Czechoslovakia. Self-determination served him as a means to destroy and annex the country. Funds from Germany flowed into the SdP coffers and Berlin conjured up imaginary Soviet airfields in Czechoslovakia and labeled Czechoslovakia "a puppet of Soviet imperialism." But the most important Nazi assault on Czechoslovakia was its propaganda machine's denunciation of the supposed torture and physical abuse of Sudeten Germans at the hands of Czechoslovakiaâ"this from the regime that had already built concentration camps.
By mid-1937, Hitler simultaneously pressured Prague to make concessions on the Sudeten issue and completed a military plan for the conquest of Czechoslovakia. The head of the SdP, Konrad Henlein, went on a diplomatic offensive, touring western European capitals and demanding that Sudeten rights be acknowledged. Henlein at first attempted to convince the European governments that his ambitions were limited to autonomy for Sudeten Germans. With time, his statements became increasingly belligerent. On January 1, 1938, he announced that "The Czechoslovak people must recognize that no settlement will ever be reached with our great neighbor, Germany, until the Sudeten Germans are satisfied." In 1938 the SdP adopted the Carlsbad Eight Points, a manifesto that essentially called for the partitioning of Czechoslovakia and the secession of the Sudetenland to Germany.
THE WESTERN RESPONSE
The internal problem of minority "rights" quickly assumed international dimensions. Responding to Nazi protests, the Western powers received Henlein with an official welcome of a kind usually reserved for a head of state. In contrast, as Czech historian Radomir Luza notes, Czechoslovakia's president Benes was treated "more cavalierly than if he had been the chief of a tribe in Africa."
This symbolism revealed a deeper outlook as the Western states pressured Prague to accede to Sudeten demands. In July 1936, Britain's Foreign Minister Anthony Eden urged Czechoslovakia to grant the Sudeten Germans full autonomy. Responding to these pressures, Czechoslovak leaders agreed to negotiate with the SdP and proposed a program for limited Sudeten autonomy. The SdP, acting under orders from Hitler, peremptorily rejected the plan. (Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop advised the Sudeten Nazis: "Always negotiate and do not let the thread break; but always demand more than the opposing side can offer.")7 London pressured Prague to sweeten the plan and agree to a Sudeten plebiscite, though it was obvious that such a plebiscite would lead to the partition of Czechoslovakia.
Following the Austrian Anschluss (annexation) in March 1938, Sudeten German violence and mass demonstrations against Czechoslovakia grew, along with support for the SdP. Henlein escalated his rhetoric, denouncing the Prague regime as "Hussite-Bolshevik criminals," even as threats from the Third Reich assumed a more ominous tone. Reports arrived of German troop concentrations near the Czechoslovak frontier. At the same time that Berlin prepared for war, it denounced the Czechs as "the real disturbers of peace in Europe."
Prague from the beginning argued that the issue of Sudeten self-determination was a red herring, that the real cause of crisis was the Third Reich's aggressive intentions. The few Western voices that agreed with this analysis were generally ignored. William Srang, head of the Central European Department of the British Foreign Office, warned that the German government is "using the Sudeten German question as an instrument of policy to strengthen [its] political and military position." The democracies insisted on seeing the Sudeten conflict as a question of minority rights and self-determination. Britain and Germany held talks in September 1938 and issued a joint statement affirming the rights of the Sudeten Germans, with no mention at all of the security needs of Czechoslovakia.
Although Czechoslovakia had always maintained that the Sudeten problem was an internal affair and no business of the world community, in August 1938, London demanded and Prague had to accept a British mediator. Lord Runciman, known for his strong Nazi sympathies, recommended to Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that all agitation against the Nazis be forbidden inside Czechoslovakia. Runciman then added: "Czechoslovakian rule in the Sudeten areas for the last twenty years, though not actively oppressive ... has been marked by tactlessness, lack of understanding, petty intolerance, and discrimination, to a point where the resentment of the German population was inevitably moving in the direction of revolt." Chamberlain and French prime minister Edouard Daladier accused Prague of ill-treating the Sudeten minority and so being responsible for conflict. The European press routinely painted Czechoslovakia prime minister Benes as a warmonger.
During the negotiations over the mounting crisis, Prague had to accede under Western pressure to one German demand after another. It agreed on making the Carlsbad Eight Points the basis for negotiations. The SdP, under orders from Berlin not to reach a real agreement, met each new unilateral concession by Prague with new demands. Hitler told Karl Hermann Frank on August 6 that he had decided to go to war with the Czechs, even while continuing to negotiate "peace."8 German strategy called for the negotiations to fail, so that the Reich would have an excuse to intervene militarily. Henlein was instructed that, in the unlikely event of Prague's complete capitulation to the Carlsbad program, to add new demands that would infringe on Czechoslovakia's ability to formulate its own foreign policyâ"thereby compromising its own sovereignty.
As tensions mounted along the borders in the summer of 1938, Czechoslovakia went on military alert. The Czechoslovak military being based mainly on a system of emergency reserve mobilization, the Western states exerted pressure on Prague not to mobilize, so as not to provoke Berlin. Prague persisted anyway and was denounced by some in the West for war-mongering.
In late summer 1938, Prague agreed essentially to the whole of the Carlsbad program. On September 13, before the SdP could formally respond to this capitulation, an intifada-like revolt broke out in the Sudetenland. Organized by the SdP, the rioters attacked Jews, Czechs, and democrats, and fired on many Czechoslovak policemen. As the SdP leadership fled to Germany, the Czechoslovak army restored order and established martial law. But London and Paris then increased pressure on Prague. On September 19, they proposed to transfer to Germany all parts of Czechoslovakia in which the population was more than half German; in exchange, they offered Czechoslovakia an international guarantee for its new boundaries after partition. In fact, no such formal guarantee was ever received. Earlier, the same two powers had pledged to defend Czechoslovakia sovereignty over its entire territory.
MUNICH AND AFTER
On September 29-30, 1938, the leaders of Europe met in Munich and sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia by agreeing to transfer the Sudetenland to Germany. No Czechoslovak representatives were present. They apportioned parts of Czechoslovakia to Germany and other parts of the country were awarded to Poland and Hungary. (See Map 1 above for the areas given to Germany.) On October 1, the German Wehrmacht entered the Sudetenland, where most Czechoslovak fortifications happened to be located with almost no opposition. They then rapidly expanded the areas under their control. (See Map 2 above.)
The Germans immediately instituted their program of Gleichschaltung, suppressing the Czech and Slovak languages, confiscating Czechoslovak property, and forcing at bayonet point the three quarters of a million Czechoslovaks remaining in the ceded territories to emigrate. At the same time, German propaganda clamored about the alleged denial of national and human rights of those Germans still living within the rump Czechoslovakian state, demanding recognition of their rights to self-determination. On March 12, 1939, German demonstrations took place in all the remaining Czechoslovak cities with a German population. On March 15, the German army completed the destruction of Czechoslovakia by seizing military control of all the remaining parts of the country. On March 16, 1939, the German army occupied Prague, and the rump Czech state ceased to exist. In October 1939 Hitler arranged for Slovak and Ruthene minorities within Czechoslovakia to declare themselves
autonomous zones, independent of Prague, and then in November had Prague cede 4,600 square miles of territory to Hungary. Thus were the Sudeten people at last liberated and granted their national rights of self-determination. In all these events, not a single country had lifted a finger to save Czechoslovakia.
In 1938, in the midst of negotiations over the settlement of the Sudeten conflict, Czechoslovakia's president, Eduard Benes had warned the West: "Do not believe it [is] a question of self-determination. From the beginning, it has been a battle for the existence of the state." Several years later, after Sudeten self-determination had been granted and Czechoslovakia had ceased to exist as a country, Benesâ"then in exileâ"observed that "such a concept of self-determination is a priori a denial of the right of self-determination of ten million Czechoslovakians and precludes the very existence of a Czechoslovakian state."
The Czech historian Luza observes that "The Sudeten German problem was not a cause of the conflict but its pretext. The true reason, according to the Germans themselves, was a refusal of the Czechoslovakian state to become a German vassal" (emphasis in original). Years later in January 1942, Hitler confirmed this observation: "To put it briefly, the Czechoslovakians are a foreign body in the midst of the German community. There is no room both for them and for us. One of us must give way."
PARALLELS
There are, of course, many differences between the Sudeten story and the Middle East conflict, the most important being the absence of a Hitler in the latter. This said, a large number of parallels between Sudeten and Palestinian self-determination are worth noting.
We know that the ultimate goal of Sudeten "self-determination" was not some corner of the country but the whole of it, including its capital Prague; likewise, Arafat announces several times each day that his goal is Jerusalem. In both cases, the campaign against the "oppression" of a minority group in fact served as an instrument for aggression against the state in which they lived. Since 1948, those who would destroy Israel have steadily insisted that they were acting out of moral high-mindedness and compassion for their Palestinian brethren, simply trying to help the latter achieve self-determination, though their goal is far more aggressive than that.
The campaign for Palestinian self-determination, like its Sudeten forerunner, has not the slightest connection with concern over the human rights and civic treatment of Palestinians. Those who exaggerated discrimination and oppression against the minority showed little interest in their plight in neighboring German and Arab countries. The Arabs' assault on Israel has been based on a determination to drive Israel out of their Lebensraum. As such, theirs is another example of the twentieth-century tendency to disguise naked aggression in the self-righteous cloak of promoting self-determination.
"Palestinian self-determination" serves as the banner for Arab aggression against Israel. In both cases, the minority group whose "oppression" formed the rationalization for aggression in fact enjoyed toleration and democratic rights that were completely absent in the neighboring countries where its ethnic brethren formed majorities. Refusal of the neighboring states to accept the presence of an "alien population and state" within their Lebensraum led to war. Both the victims of aggression were social democracies and states with extensive "progressive socialist" structures and high standards of living.
And the future? If the Oslo process results in Palestinian statehood, will this end the Middle East conflict or mark an intermediate stage of transition to a new form? Will the Palestinian state discover the plight of oppressed and mistreated Arabs remaining in the rump Israel, much as Germany demanded further concessions for Czech Germans in the rump partitioned Czechoslovakia? That seems likely, as such demands have long been heard by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Arab states. Will Arabs of the Galilee, the Negev, the Triangle, and then those in Ramla, Haifa, and Jaffa demand their self-determination? Is a Galilee Liberation Organization yet to be heard from?
The world chose to ignore the evidence that demands for Sudeten self-determination were a Nazi device to disguise military aggression aimed at destroying the self-determination of another nation; might something similar happen in the Middle East? It remains to be seen whether Palestinians will be permitted to fulfill their role, assigned to them by the Arab states, of the Sudetens of the Middle East.
And the Western reaction: Western powers have chosen to blind themselves to the misuse of the campaign for self-determination, and to the ambition by aggressor states to use "self-determination" to liquidate the target state. The powers bewail the sufferings of the minority group while ignoring the fact that the campaign on behalf of their "rights" are serving to delegitimize and weaken the democratic states being targeted for destruction.
Looking to the future, will Great Britain (with its Ulster, Scotch, and Welsh problems), France (with the Corsicans and Bretons), Belgium (with the Flemish and Walloons), Spain (with the Basques and Catalonians), and Canada (with the Quebecois) have any doubts? No, they are all likely to agree on one thing: the Palestinians are morally and politically entitled to "self-determination," no matter how this jeopardizes Israel's security or even, as in the Czechoslovak case, its very existence. Self-determination for the "oppressed" minority is assumed to provide an instant, just, and sublime solution to a conflict. Westerners (and the rest of the world, too) dismiss challenges to Palestinian self-determination with the same unthinking and indignant self-righteousness as their grandfathers did in the 1930s with regard to Sudeten self-determination.
But what moral basis is there for such self-determination? Palestinians always identify themselves as Arabs. That being the case, why are over twenty sovereign Arab states, in a territory larger than that of the United States, not sufficient? And if Palestinians are not Arabs, why do Arab leaders never demand, at least not audibly, self-determination for those Palestinians not under Israeli controlâ"such as in Jordan and Lebanon, or in the pre-1967 West Bank?
CONCLUSION
It has become a matter of near-universal consensus in recent years that Palestinian self-determination stands at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In this view, the lack of such Palestinian self-determination drives the conflicts and the realization of such self-determination is the only formula that will lead to Middle Eastern harmony.
But this outlook ignores the fact that for a century nearly every form of aggression, irredentism, and xenophobia has wrapped itself in the banner of self-determination. Twentieth-century aggressors feel a need to present themselves as defenders of the downtrodden and friends of those souls seeking self-determination. Other examples of aggressors claiming to be fighting for self-determination for minorities or for oppressed peoples include Spain's invasion of Mexico (to protect tribes from the Aztecs); Japan's invasion of Manchuria, China, Indochina, and Burma; and Russia's occupation of Eastern Europe. More recent examples include Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia; Russia in Afghanistan; Iraq's aggression against Iran and against Kuwait; and the Serb invasions of its several neighbors, including Bosnia and Kosovo. If Iran invades Afghanistan, it, too, will rely on self-determination as a fig leaf for aggression. This historic pattern should give pause to
anyone hearing appeals about the rights to self-determination.
For decades, Palestinian self-determination has being utilized to threaten Israeli self-determination. The PLO has often repeated that Oslo is part of the "plan of stages" by which all of Palestine, including all of Israel, will be liberated in stages. The Arab states have been even less reticent about promoting the ultimate goal of dismantling Israel.
Westerners seem unable to imagine that any form of self-determination is morally or politically objectionable or ethically deniable; therefore, they tend to receive the self-determination argument with understanding and approval. Ever since Woodrow Wilson devised the term, Westerners have tended to give "self-determination" the benefit of every doubt, even though many of the most horrific conflicts on the planet have been
fought in the name of just this "self-determination."
The West must recognize that any form of Palestinian self-governance and "self-determination" must be preconditioned on the complete preservation and protection of Israeli self-determination.
1 A Gallup poll (Ma'ariv, Oct. 4, 1998), shows 62 percent of Israelis think it likely that Israeli Arabs (within the Green Line) could launch their own intifada; 31 percent think it not likely.
2 Ma'ariv, Aug. 16, 1998.
3 Most notably by Arie Stav, Czechoslovakia 1938â"Israel Today (Ariel, West Bank: Ariel Center for Policy Research, 1997).
4 General references include Rudamir Luza, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans: A Study of Czech-German Relations (New York: New York University Press, 1964); Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, The Meaning of Czech History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974); Robert M. Smelser, The Sudeten Problem, 1933-1938 (Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1975).
5 Quoted in Josef Korbel, Twentieth Century Czechoslovakia, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 123.
6 Ibid., p. 119.
7 Quoted in Smelser, The Sudeten Problem, p. 233.
8 Smelser, The Sudeten Problem, pp. 233-34.
2. Krauthammer on Settlements
The Settlements Canard
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, June 05, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Obama the Humble declares there will be no more "dictating"
to other countries. We should "forge partnerships as opposed to simply
dictating solutions," he told the G-20 summit. In Middle East
negotiations, he told al-Arabiya, America will henceforth "start by
listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating."
An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone -- Iran, Russia, Cuba,
Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all
settlement activity. As Secretary of State Clinton imperiously explained
the diktat: "a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts,
not natural-growth exceptions."
What's the issue? No "natural growth" means strangling to death the
thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line, many of them suburbs of
Jerusalem, that every negotiation over the past decade has envisioned
Israel retaining. It means no increase in population. Which means no
babies. Or if you have babies, no housing for them -- not even (BEG
ITAL)within(END ITAL) the existing town boundaries. Which means for every
child born, someone has to move out. No community can survive like that.
The obvious objective is to undermine and destroy these towns -- even
before negotiations.
To what end? Over the last decade, the U.S. government has understood that
any final peace treaty would involve Israel retaining some of the close-in
settlements -- and compensating the Palestinians accordingly with land
from within Israel itself.
That was envisioned in the Clinton plan in the Camp David negotiations in
2000, and again at Taba in 2001. After all, why turn towns to rubble when,
instead, Arabs and Jews can stay in their homes if the 1949 armistice line
is shifted slightly into the Palestinian side to capture the major
close-in Jewish settlements, and then shifted into Israeli territory to
capture Israeli land to give to the Palestinians?
This idea is not only logical, not only accepted by both Democratic and
Republican administrations for the last decade, but was agreed to in
writing in the letters of understanding exchanged between Israel and the
United States in 2004 -- and subsequently overwhelmingly endorsed by a
concurrent resolution of Congress.
Yet the Obama State Department has repeatedly refused to endorse these
agreements or even say it will honor them. This from a president who
piously insists that all parties to the conflict honor previous
obligations.
The entire "natural growth" issue is a concoction. It's farcical to
suggest that the peace process is moribund because a teacher in the Jewish
Quarter of Jerusalem is making an addition to her house to accommodate new
grandchildren -- when Gaza is run by Hamas terrorists dedicated to
permanent war with Israel and when Mahmoud Abbas, having turned down every
one of Ehud Olmert's peace offers, brazenly declares that he is in a
waiting mode -- waiting for Hamas to become moderate and for Israel to
cave -- before he'll do anything to advance peace.
In his much-heralded "Muslim world" address in Cairo Thursday, Obama
declared that the Palestinian people's "situation" is "intolerable."
Indeed it is, the result of 60 years of Palestinian leadership that gave
its people corruption, tyranny, religious intolerance and forced
militarization; leadership that for three generations -- Haj Amin
al-Husseini in 1947, Yasser Arafat in 2000, Abbas in December 2008 --
rejected every offer of independence and dignity, choosing destitution and
despair rather than accept any settlement not accompanied by the
extinction of Israel.
In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over
to the Palestinians, their leaders -- Fatah and Hamas alike -- built no
schools, no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, no institutions that
would relieve their people's suffering. Instead they poured everything
into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing
billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.
Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word
of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued
but one concrete declaration of new American policy: "The United States
does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," thus
reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the
fault of Israel and the settlements.
Blaming Israel and picking a fight over "natural growth" may curry favor
with the Muslim "street." But it will only induce the Arab states to do
like Abbas: sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter. Which
makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.
3. Joseph Farah on Obama:
Obama tells Jews where they can live
Joseph Farah
Posted: May 29, 2009 1:00 am Eastern
Barack Obama is taking what he and his administration refer to as "a more
balanced approach to Middle East policy."
Let me explain what that literally means in real terms.
It means the U.S. government is now using its clout with Israel to insist
Jews, not Israelis, mind you, but Jews, be disallowed from living in East
Jerusalem and the historically Jewish lands of Judea and Samaria , often
referred to as the West Bank .
I want you to try to imagine the outrage, the horror, the outcry, the
clamoring, the gnashing of teeth that would ensue if Arabs or Muslims were
told they could no longer live in certain parts of Israel - let alone
their
own country.
Of course, that would never happen with "a more balanced approach to the
Middle East ."
It's the 1930s all over again. This time, it's the enlightened liberal
voices of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama who are telling Jews where they
can live, how they can live and how far they must bend if they want to
live
at all.
I know you haven't heard it put like this before. I don't really
understand
why. There is simply no other accurate way to explain the machinations
behind the latest demands on Israel from the West and the rest of the
world.
WND's Aaron Klein gets to the heart of Israel 's decline in his new book,
"The Late Great State of Israel : How Enemies Within and Without Threaten
the Jewish Nation's Survival"
Israel is being reduced to " Auschwitz borders." Jews have already been
told
they can no longer live in the Ga za Strip. Now they are being told they
can
no longer choose to live in any of the areas being set aside by
international elites for a future Palestinian state.
Again, I ask,
"Why would internationalists seek to create, by definition, a
racist,
anti-Jewish state that
doesn't even tolerate the mere presence of Jews?"
Can anyone answer that question for me?
Obama and Clinton - and, thus, by definition, you and me, the taxpayers of
the United States - have determined they will yield to the racist,
bigoted,
anti-Semitic demands of the Palestinian Authority that no Jews be allowed
to live in their new state.
I like to think that in any other part of the world, this kind of effort
at
ethnically cleansing a region would be roundly condemned by all civilized
people. Yet, because most people simply don't understand the clear,
official plan by the Arab leaders to force out all Jews from the new
Palestinian state, the policies of capitulation retain a degree of
sympathy, even political support, from much of the world.
Think about what I am saying: It is the official policy of the Palestinian
Authority that all Jews must get off the land! Why is the United States
supporting the creation of a new, racist, anti-Semitic hate state? Why is
the civilized world viewing this as a prescription for peace in the
region?
Why is this considered an acceptable idea?
Is there any other place in the world where that kind of official policy
of
racism and ethnic cleansing is tolerated - even condoned?
Why are the rules different in the Middle East ? Why are the rules
different
for Arabs? Why are the rules different for Muslims?
Why are U.S. tax dollars supporting the racist, anti-Semitic entity known
as the Palestinian Authority?
That's what we do when we forbid "settlement construction," repairs,
natural growth, additions to existing communities.
This is "balance"?
Are there any impositions upon the Arabs and Muslims suggesting they can
no
longer move to Israel ? No.
Are there any impositions on Arabs and Muslims suggesting they cannot buy
homes in Israel ? No.
Are there any impositions on Arabs and Muslim suggesting they cannot
repair
their existing homes in Israel ? No.
Are there any impositions on Arabs or Muslims suggesting the cannot build
settlements anywhere they like? No.
Now, keep in mind, there are already quite a few Arab and Muslim states in
the Middle East . Many of them already forbid Jews to live in them. Some
prohibit Christians as well. But now, the only Jewish state in the world,
and one that has a claim on the land dating back to the days of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, is being told Jews must keep off land currently under
their own control, but destined for transfer to people who hate them,
despise them, want to see them dead and will not even accept living
peacefully with them as neighbors.
All the while, Israel continues to hold out its na.ve hand of friendship
to
the Arabs and the Muslims - welcoming them in their own tiny nation
surrounded by hateful neighbors. Arabs and Muslims are offered full
citizenship rights - and even serve in elected office. They publish
newspapers and broadcast on radio and television freely.
But, conversely, Jews are one step away from eviction from homes they have
sometimes occupied for generations. Ga za is about to happen all over
again.
I hope my Jewish friends remember this well. Many of them voted for Barack
Obama. Many of them voted for Hillary Clinton. These are not your friends.
These are the same kinds of people who turned away ships of Jewish
refugees
from Germany in the 1940s. These are the same kinds of people who appeased
Adolf Hitler at Munich . These are the same kinds of people who made the
reformation of the modern state of Israel so difficult.
I say, "No more ethnic cleansing. No more official anti-Semitism accepted.
No more Jew-bashing. No more telling Jews where they can live, how they
can
- and if they can live."
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated
columnist with Creators Syndicate. His book "Taking America Back: A
Radical
Plan to Revive Freedom, Morality and Justice" has gained newfound
popularity in the wake of November's election. Farah also edits the online
intelligence newsletter Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, in which he utilizes
his sources developed over 30 years in the news business.
Joseph Farah Twitters at josephfarah.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
Israeli Arab lawmaker clashes with U.S. visitor
Knesset member rants, demands American Jewish leader be banned
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 31, 2009
9:36 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WorldNetDaily
Morton Klein
JERUSALEM . An American Jewish leader was restricted by security guards
from entering Israel's parliament after he questioned an Arab lawmaker
over seemingly anti-Israel statements and practices, WND has learned.
The episode unfolded last week when Morton Klein, president of the Zionist
Organization of America, was in the Knesset waiting room with a group of
other U.S. Jewish leaders who had come to parliament for pre-scheduled
meetings with the country's top leadership, including Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu.
The group was about to enter when Klein noticed Israeli Arab Knesset
Member Ahmed Tibi was walking into the building.
According to Klein and several witnesses who spoke to WND, the ZOA
president approached Tibi and questioned him about a conference the
lawmaker attended in Doha last year in which he reportedly registered as a
representative for the state of "Palestine" and not Israel. Tibi, who once
was an official adviser to late PLO Leader Yasser Arafat, has multiple
times represented himself as acting for "Palestine."
Klein also questioned Tibi about scores of purported anti-Israel
statements the lawmaker made, such as recent public charges of Israeli
apartheid against the Palestinians.
"I asked Tibi if he thinks it appropriate for a Knesset member to be
blackening Israel's image by calling it an apartheid state and going
around as a paid Knesset member and yet representing himself as from the
so-called state of Palestine, which doesn't exist," Klein said.
Both Klein and multiple witnesses related how after the questions were
asked, Tibi started screaming "at the top of his lungs" for security to
expel Klein, accusing the Jewish leader of physically and then verbally
assaulting him.
More than one witness told WND Tibi was "acting like a maniac."
(Story continues below)
When the guards entered, Tibi immediately retracted his claim of physical
assault, but maintained that Klein had verbally assaulted him . a charge
denied by the many witnesses in the room at the time.
In line with instructions from the Knesset speaker, Likud member Reuven
Rivlin, security guards were instructed not to allow entry to Klein until
he formally apologized to Tibi, an action Klein refused to take.
"Why should I apologize for asking Tibi a legitimate question?" Klein
asked. "And why should Rivlin side with Tibi? Rivlin has been a friend of
mine for years and agrees with my views, plus I didn't do anything wrong."
Klein called up Knesset Members Aryeh Eldad of the National Union Party
and Danny Danon of Likud, both of whom invited Klein into the building as
their personal guests, but the Jewish leader was still denied entry.
After waiting in the lobby for over two hours, Klein was finally allowed
in when Tibi accepted an in-person statement from the ZOA president that
he did not mean to offend Tibi with his questions. That statement was
brokered by a lawmaker from the opposition Kadima party. At the time,
according to witnesses, Tibi refused to shake Klein's hand.
The drama did not end there, however.
About 30 minutes after the truce, Klein and other Jewish leaders ran into
Tibi again in a large open section of the Knesset. They told WND that they
overheard Tibi speaking on his cell phone in English about how Klein was
only allowed into the building after he officially apologized to Tibi.
At that point, Klein's deputy, Steve Goldberg, approached Tibi to point
out to the lawmaker that he was inaccurately describing the fiasco.
"That's a total lie. Stop telling people that lie. Klein never
apologized," Goldberg said, according to witnesses.
Tibi then started screaming at Goldberg, prompting about 12 security
guards to rush into the room. Tibi claimed to the guards that Klein and
Goldberg had both verbally assaulted him. He demanded the pair be barred
from the Knesset immediately.
Klein and others in the room, however, pointed out that Goldberg acted
alone and that Tibi was not verbally assaulted. Tibi then relented and
instructed the guards to only boot Goldberg, who was promptly escorted
from the building and was not allowed back in that day.
In an interview with WND yesterday, Tibi claimed that when Klein first
approached him in the Knesset lobby, the Jewish leader had told Tibi he
should not be allowed in the Knesset building because of his alleged
anti-Israel views.
That claim was strongly denied by Klein and other witnesses who were
interviewed.
Tibi also told WND that Klein was a "rightist" who is "anti-Arab."
"He has a problem with me because my first name is Ahmed," Tibi said.
Klein retorted, "No, I have a problem with him because he is anti-Israel
and also a Knesset member."
Knesset Member Danon said he filed a formal complaint with the Knesset
speaker about the episode.
"Tibi is not running the Knesset," Danon told WND. "There is no reason a
Jewish leader who spends his life defending Israel abroad should have to
go through this travesty in the Knesset building. I am proud Klein did not
apologize, and I commend him for the questions he asked Tibi."
2. And you thought that Bar Ilan University was immune from the disease
of Jewish self-hatred and auto-annihilation? Think again:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131700
v
3. Beinin the obsessed anti-ZIonist:
http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35066
4. Ordinarily there is virtually nothing that any Israeli Labor Party
hack says with which I can find agreement. But this time is an exception.
The Labor Party secretary general, sort of like the Chief Commissar, has
denounced Yuli Tamir, who was until recently Minister of Education. The
general secretary, Weizmann Shiri, says that Tamir is a nothing and has
remained a nothing.
Tamir is best remembered for introducing material into the Israeli
school curriculum
calling for Israelis to mourn the very existence of their country
as a "Nakba," and for defending "female circumcision" in the Third World.
Here is the full piece:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1090357.html
'Yuli Tamir was nothing and remained nothing'
By Gidi Weitz
The new Labor secretary general, Weizmann Shiri, delivers an unprecedented
attack on the party's "rebels" in an interview tomorrow in Haaretz
Magazine.
"None of them, if you stand them one-on-one in front of [Ehud] Barak, has
accomplished or will accomplish 10 percent of what he did for Israel's
security in particular and for the country in general. You're looking at
people who have been party activists all their lives, and I say that in
the negative sense of the word, political hacks, who are guided by their
personal agenda and nothing else. I know a large percentage of these
people, and I feel disdain for them, " Shiri said. Advertisement
Does Shiri think it is reasonable for the rebels to vote against the
coalition?
"Listen carefully, that's why they're changing the constitution, so that
whoever decides that he wants to behave like that will decide his
political future for himself, period. Some of them, their future has
already been decided."
As for the former chairman of the Labor Party, Amir Peretz, who served as
defense minister during the Second Lebanon War, Shiri says:
"Look, in the eyes of the world, the Israel Defense Forces had turned into
an army of dishrags that was incapable of getting water for its soldiers.
You have to tell the truth and only the truth - all the rest is slogans.
In every properly run country that man would have been kicked out, along
with the prime minister."
Of one of the rebels, former education minister Yuli Tamir, Shiri says:
"She was nothing and she has remained nothing. Her history does not prove
that she is the most honest of people. She came from Peace Now, and she
sat in a government with Ehud Olmert and said he was one of the best prime
ministers, in spite of all the corruption.... She has no problem at all.
It's a type of hypocrisy and ingratitude. I'm saying in the clearest
possible way that she does not represent the electorate of the Labor
Party."
With regard to the ousting of his predecessor, MK Eitan Cabel, Shiri says:
"I heard Eitan Cabel calls Barak 'the emperor.' It's a shame and a
disgrace. He compared Barak to Hugo Chavez; he could have come closer to
the Middle East and compared him to Assad. It's nerve to claim his ousting
was a dictatorial decision. Had Barak not ousted him, they would have
called him a dishrag."
Shiri also gives a verbal trouncing to former justice minister Haim Ramon,
Barak's most outspoken critic: "Haim Ramon is a person who is full of
poison. This is a bad man, a manipulator. He should look in the mirror and
ask himself how he will be remembered in the pages of history."
In response to Shiri's remarks, Peretz said: "I left Barak an army with a
training program, a long-term acquisitions program, a different deployment
of the home front and the National Emergency Authority, which was
established during my tenure. I accept the fact that I paid the price of
the belligerence surrounding the war; those who benefited from it were the
defense establishment and the Jewish people. It is beneath my dignity to
discuss Shiri and Ehud Barak, who led the party to the most embarrassing
failure in its history."
Yuli Tamir said: "It's no wonder that Barak hired a pathetic mercenary to
run his ideological wars for him. He's afraid to do it himself."
Eitan Cabel responded: "It's embarrassing for me to even respond. What is
going on in Labor these days speaks volumes. I agree with Shiri on one
point - I should have quit my job as secretary general the minute the
party convention decided to join the Netanyahu government."
The Interview Netanyahu Didn't Give
By: Steven Plaut
Date: Wednesday, June 03 2009
While in the U.S. last month, Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a number of
interviews. The following is one he did not give, though I wish he would
have.
Interviewer: In your recent talks in Washington, Obama administration
officials, including Secretary of State Clinton, repeatedly stressed their
view that only a "two-state solution," one in which a Palestinian state is
erected alongside Israel, can create a lasting peace in the Middle East.
What is your position and that of your government on the idea of a
two-state solution?
Netanyahu: We prefer a solution based on time travel in a time machine at
speeds faster than light.
Interviewer: What does that mean? There are no time machines or anything
that can produce speeds faster than that of light.
Netanyahu: Yes, exactly like the two-state solution. No two-state solution
exists or is possible, just like time machines are not possible. One can
perhaps imagine a situation in which two states, Israel and "Palestine,"
exist, just like you can imagine a time machine, but this represents no
solution at all.
People can sit around and concoct fictional imaginary worlds in which
there do exist two-state solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict. But no
such solution exists in our galaxy. I have never much liked science
fiction and prefer to restrict my thinking about political solutions to
the realm of non-fiction.
Interviewer: So if the two-state solution is out, what is the alternative?
Netanyahu: I call it the 23-state solution. The Arabs get to keep the 22
states they already have and the Jews keep the one state they have. The
Palestinians get no state. They are welcome to move to any of the 22 Arabs
states if they are unhappy with that idea.
Interviewer: Well, you still must have some thoughts on the overall
parameters within which any resolution of the conflict must be pursued.
Netanyahu: Yes. The right way to begin to think about resolving the
conflict is to start from the end and first rule out what will not and
cannot happen - ideas and proposals with which there will be no compromise
and no negotiations. We are willing to take under consideration any
program or proposal for peace that is formulated within those structural
parameters, and there are quite a few conceivable such ones.
Interviewer: So what are those ironclad parameters?
Netanyahu: There are two, and no negotiations of any sort and no solution
will ever be possible unless everyone understands that these must serve as
the starting points for any resolution of the Middle East conflict: There
will be no new independent Palestinian state west of the Jordan river, and
the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza will not be granted
citizenship in Israel.
Any idea or plan that accepts those two axioms as its points of departure
is one we are willing to take under consideration.
Interviewer: Explain.
Netanyahu: A Palestinian state is out because its raison d'etre would be
aggression and terror against Israel, and we are not willing to grant the
Palestinians a new base from which to launch war. No Palestinian state in
any form, no matter its borders or the group serving as its leadership or
ruling class, will coexist with Israel. Any Palestinian state will seek
war.
Anyone with any doubts that "Palestine" would be nothing more
than a rocket-launching base and terrorist dispatch point need only look
at what happened in Gaza after Israel foolishly abandoned it. There is no
doubt or question about what such a "state" would pursue. Therefore there
will be no such state.
Interviewer: That still leaves Israel's own Arab minority. What do you
propose for those Israeli Arabs who are unwilling to live peacefully as an
ethnic minority within a Jewish state with a dominant Jewish majority?
Netanyahu: A one-way plane ticket, coach, to the destination of their
choice outside of Israel.
Interviewer: What about the problem of all the Jewish settlers and
settlements?
Netanyahu: I do not see any problem. In any resolution of the conflict,
Jews will have to be as free to move and live among Arabs as Arabs already
are free to move and live among Jews. A "peace plan" that requires that
Jews be ethnically cleansed out of areas with Arab majorities is no peace
plan at all.
I have already ruled out a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. We
are willing to consider alternative plans that satisfy the two axioms I
discussed above. But I expect we would refuse to agree to any scenario in
which Jews are prevented from living among Arabs the same way Arabs live
among Jews. The Arab states may remain apartheid regimes, but we will not
have ethnic cleansing of Jews in a Palestinian apartheid state in our own
back yards.
Interviewer: So what exactly do you propose doing about the Jewish
settlements?
Netanyahu: Build lots more of them. The settlers are Israel's mine
canaries. The attitude of the Arabs toward Jewish settlers is a litmus
test and a warning sign of Arab attitudes toward Jews in general. Until
the Arabs are willing to make their peace with the idea of Jewish settlers
living in their midst, there is no reason to believe they are willing to
come to terms with Israel existing as a state within their midst. And
until the Arabs come to terms with the existence of a Jewish state in
their midst, the search for "peace solutions" is a complete waste of
everyone's time.
Interviewer: Many people think Jerusalem is the hardest issue of all to
solve. Do you agree?
Netanyahu: No. Jerusalem is the easiest. We have a very simple, flexible
and clear position on Jerusalem. It is this: They can't have it. That is
our solution. We offer them nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. Muslims who
wish to pray in the Jerusalem mosques can do so, same as members of other
religions are free to attend their houses of worship. In terms of
sovereignty and political or administrative control, we agree to grant
them nothing at all.
Interviewer: Do you think the Arabs will agree to that?
Netanyahu: No. In fact, let me be even more blunt. If the Arabs offer us a
choice between 1,000 years of war, bloodshed and strife or immediate peace
in exchange for Israel giving up Jerusalem, we choose the 1,000 years of
war.
Interviewer: But a lot of people around the world will be unhappy with
that approach and denounce you for it.
Netanyahu: Tough.
2. Interesting piece:
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/39497
3. Leftist academic bimbo of the week:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Diana%20Dolev.htm
4. More leftist academics for the extermination of Israel:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Petitions%20-%20Barcelona%20twinning.htm
radical Left in Israel is upset.
What has gotten them so worked up this time? It seems that some small
closed Jewish communities in the Galilee have decided that all
prospective new members joining them must share with the existing members
a commitment to Zionism and to the Jewish and democratic character of the
state of Israel. The details of the story are here:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1089466.html
You realize what that means? It means that virtually no one who works
for Haaretz would be admitted as a member under these new rules! It
would also keep anti-Israel or pro-jihad Arabs from becoming members.
And THAT is racism, opines the Israeli daily for the thinking Israeli with
its ever-dwindling market share of readers.
Only one itsy bitsy problem with all this. Haaretz is shocked,
simply shocked I say, that a small closed community of a few dozen
families would dare to ideological and life-style create criteria for
residence and membership. But the very same Haaretz has been running
article after article defending the right of anti-Orthodox thugs and
hooligans in Ramat Aviv to exclude Orthodox familes from living THERE.
The difference is that Ramat Aviv, the Tel Aviv suburb that is home to
Tel Aviv University and to much of Israel.s Limousine Left, probably has
more than 100,000 families living in it and is not a small intimate closed
community of a handful of families. In recent days radical secularists,
including quite a few members of the tenured Left at Tel Aviv University,
have been harassing and threatening Orthodox families seeking to relocate
to Ramat Aviv. The radical secularists say that the Orthodox .just do
not belong. and are .plotting to take over. Ramat Aviv.
Not only is THAT not racism, scream Haaretz writers, but it is little
more than progressive enlightened democrats defending democracy!
2. A couple dozen members of the tenured Left at the University of Haifa
have publicly declared that if the 'Anti-Nakba Law' actually passes the
Knesset and becomes law, then they plan to hold Nakba commemoration
events in which Israel.s very existence is mourned as a protest against
the law.
My guess is that if Israel ever passes a law with real teeth against
Holocaust Denial, then as a protest against it Israeli tenured leftists
will hold ceremonies in which it is declared that the Holocaust was a hoax
invented by Zionists.
Meanwhile, here is a form of celebration of the Arabs. .Land Day. of which
many of my colleagues will approve:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131639
3. Zeev Segel, the Haaretz legal affairs columnist and professor at
Tel Aviv University is horrified at the idea of an .Anti-Nakba Law.. He
regards it as .patently lawless.. See this:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1089477.html
Only problem is, this same Segal was a leading advocate of all the 1990s
McCarthyist infringements on the rights of freedom of speech of anti-Oslo
dissidents and also of the prosecution of people for .incitement. when
they dared to disagree with the Israeli Left. Those harassments and
prosecutions were not .patently lawless..
4. Bailing out the terrorists:
http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35047
5. Test your Hebrew:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/3569
6. Need a gift for a radical feminist? How bout
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131641
7. Shiver me timbers:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131620