Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university.
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by Steven Plaut
The United States fought two Barbary wars against the Barbary coast pirates. In the first Barbary war alone, the US suffered 35 dead and 64 wounded. The pirates suffered at least 800 dead and many more than that wounded. The American forces put the cities of the pirates under siege and blockade. When the pirates renewed their terrorist activity, (in part thanks to the US being at war with Great Britain), the second Barbary war was fought in 1815.
The third Barbary War against Mediterranean pirates was fought last night. It was fought by Israel against violent armed terrorists.
Like the Americans in the 1800s, Israel has put the terrorist pirate enclave of Gaza under siege. It is only letting in civilian consumer goods. But that has the supporters of the Hamas upset. They demand that Israel allow in weapons so that the Hamas can engage in more terrorism and piracy.
It was against that background that the "flotilla" of terrorists trying to challenge Israeli sovereign control of its sea lanes and waters was organized by Islamists and Western anti-Semitic leftists. Once again the modern Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of Islamofascism and Western leftism united to attack the Jews.
The 20 (or whatever the correct number is) of dead terrorists from the flotilla ships are being proclaimed "innocent civilians." They were neither innocent nor civilians. They were guilty terrorists. They opened fire on IDF soldiers, and attacked them with knives and pipes and other weapons.
After two decades of pusillanimous pandering to such people and coddling leftist "solidarity" anarchist terrorists, even when they violently attack IDF soldiers and Israeli police, Israel has at long last done the right thing. At long last it has taken a clear position: raise a hand against an Israeli soldier and die!
The Flotilla Flotiller
Based on the hit song "Thriller" by Michael Jackson (or – for those of you who read Tikkun magazine - Reb Michael) - original lyrics can be found here: http://www.elyrics.net/read/m/michael-jackson-lyrics/thriller-lyrics.html )
Flotilla - Flotiller lyrics
It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart
They scream and shoot, terrorists fire before you make it
You fire back at the creeps right between the eyes
So what if You're stigmatized
'Cause this flotilla, flotiller night
And no one's gonna save you from the jihadists about to strike
You know flotiller, thriller night
You're fighting for your life against a killer, flotiller tonight
'Cause this is flotiller, thriller night
There ain't no second chance against the thing with forty eyes, girl
flotiller, thriller night
You're fighting for your life against the killer, flotiller tonight
They're out to get you, there's demons closing in on every side
They will possess you unless you fire back
Now is the time for you and I to cuddle close together, yeah
All through the night I'll save you from the terror on the screen
I'll make you see
That this is flotiller, thriller night
flotiller, thriller night
Israel Hayom Reports about Leftist Harassment of Students
by Steven Plaut
On Sunday May 30, there were two notable news items related to Israel Hayom, the Israeli freebie daily newspaper (which is now the second largest newspaper in Israel). The first was the failure of the attempt by Knesset politicians to pass a bolshevik law that would prohibit handing out free newspapers in Israel and so would shut Israel Hayom down. The proposed bill was a thinly disguised attempt by the owner of Yediot Ahronot to shut down his competitor.
For a change, freedom of speech won a round in Israel.
The other news story has to do with Israel Hayom running a series of special articles the same day, including on its front page, about Israeli leftist professors abusing and harassing students who dare to disagree with their political indoctrinations in class.
The articles are only in Hebrew, but here is the gist.
The main article appears here. The headline is: "If you think like me, then you will get your grade." The news story cites the latest report distributed by the Zionist student group Im Tirtzu in which they document the anti- and post-Zionist bias that exercises hegemony over Israeli academia. The story cites several people, including Prof. Eli Pollak from the Weizmann Institute, charging that Far Leftists control academic dialogue in Israeli universities. He describes how right-leaning professors are harassed at Israeli universities and fear for their careers. The article also cites anti-Semitic extremist Neve Gordon from Ben Gurion University, the Israeli Norman Finkelstein, as saying that complaints about leftist harassment is all hooey and the Im Tirtzu report is not reliable. You know, unlike Gordon's propaganda books.
The article then cites Tel Aviv University moonbette Rachel Giora who says it is not about opinion but about facts, and the Far Left happens aleways to be correct when it comes to facts. Giora just got back from Boston where she led the local pogrom to defame the Technion as a war machine.
The main Israel Hayom article is accompanied by two companion pieces. The more important one is an op-ed by Prof. Avraham Diskin (appears here http://www.israelhayom.co.il/site/newsletter_opinion.php?a=3809 ), who just retired as political science professor at the Hebrew University. Unlike much of the rest of his department, Diskin is a highly intelligent Zionist, near center politically. He argues that the Im Tirtzu report of leftist harassment is largely correct. It is interesting to note that Diskin seems to have been reluctant to denounce the tenured Left BEFORE he retired. Diskin also describes the feeding frenzy and attacks on Im Tirtzu taking place on the Israeli "Social Science" chat list for Israeli academics. Dozens of leftist smears appeared there in recent days. I am also a member of that list. The owner of the list, Dr. David Faur-Levy, is exercising censorship on that list and allowing all leftist rants to appear while repeatedly blocking non-leftist responses and rebuttals. That chat list is a typical example of Israeli tenured leftist suppression of pluralism and freedom of speech. The level of discourse there is such that an objective reader would draw the conclusion that Israeli universities are fourth-rate preschools. In the past Faur-Levy accused me on the list of being personally responsible for the placing of that bomb in front of the home of Zev Sternhell and then blocking my attempt at responding.
Anyway, the other companion article on Israel Hayom is by Meretz Knesset Member Zehava Galon, one of the three remaining Meretz members of parliament. It appears here: http://www.israelhayom.co.il/site/newsletter_opinion.php?a=3810 She of course denies there is any leftist hegemony in Israeli academia and insists that the REAL danger to Israeli democracy is when critics of leftists like Im Tirtzu are allowed to exercise freedom of speech.
1. More leftwing fascism at Tel Aviv University – at the initiative of Hezb'Allah cheerleader Gadi Algazi:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137768
TA University Conference: No Entry for "Settler" Reporters (a settlement is a neighborhood in Jerusalem where the Left does not want any Jews)
by Hillel Fendel
A reporter for Israel's newest radio station, Givat Ze'ev-based Galei Yisrael (Israel Airwaves), was not permitted to enter a Tel Aviv University conference on the "Nakba" – as nationalist Arabs and anti-Israel elements refer to the Arab armies' crushing defeat in Israel's War of Independence.
The event was held last week in TAU, featuring events connected with the Nakba – (Catastrophe, in Arabic). The conference also dealt with the "need" to allow hundreds of thousands of Arabs, or more, to flood Israel under the "right of return."
Galei Yisrael reporter Kobi Tzucker showed up to cover the event, but things did not turn out exactly as he thought. Tzucker said that one of the organizers, History Prof. Gadi Algazi, "saw me enter with a recording device and asked me which media outlet I'm from. I told him Galei Yisrael, and he said, 'the radio from Givat Ze'ev?'"
"I told him that yes, it's in Givat Ze'ev, and then a few students gathered around me, and he said quite insultingly, 'I will not have anyone from the settlements coming here to cover this event.'"
Givat Ze'ev is the fifth-largest Jewish town in Judea and Samaria, with some 11,200 people, located just north of Jerusalem. Only Modiin Illit, Beitar Illit, Maaleh Adumim (each with between 35,000 and 45,000 people), and Ariel (16,700), are larger.
For its part, Tel Aviv University is located in northern Tel Aviv, on lands occupied until 1948 by an Arab village named Sheikh Munis.
Tzucker didn't give up, however, and managed to sneak in from another entrance. He was able to hear Muhammed Bakri, referred to in the conference as a "Palestinian producer," discuss how the Nakba continues on in Israel. Bakri is an Israeli-Arab actor and filmmaker, whose most notorious accomplishment is the anti-Israel film "Jenin, Jenin."
Prof. Algazi sat in prison for a number of months 30 years ago for refusing to serve as an IDF soldier in Judea and Samaria. (IsraelNationalNews.com)
2. I am trying to get people to start referring to the Jihadi-Leftist alliance as the new Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Please help me get it into use. Use it with all your friends.
One other thing. This is no doubt a side effect from not taking first year economics. But a lot of columnists and reporters from the friendly pro-Israel camp are missing the point about the PLO announcing that it is boycotting products that are made in "settlements." Zionist commentators are screaming in rage. Wrong position! The Zionist position should be that not only do we support the "Palestinians" in choosing not to buy any products made by Jewish "settlers," but that we will help them by prohibiting altogether sales of anything at all by any Jewish Israelis (all of whom are "settlers" in the opinion of the Pestilinians.) Instead of fighting the "Palestinian" boycott of Israel, Israel should help them by making it mandatory!
3. The Hamas aid flotilla announced they will be holding a ceremony to commemorate the US sailors who died in the USS Liberty incident in 1967. That incident, where Israel accidentally attacked a US navy ship which was where it should not have been in the middle of the Six Day War, has long been a rallying cry for Neo-Nazis seeking to demonize Israel.
You will note that the same flotilla will NOT be holding any ceremony to mourn the victims of Islamofascism on the USS Cole, in the World Trade Center Towers, in the US forces in Iraq, etc.
4. What should Israel do with the flotilla? Well, I got this idea from an episode of the Sopranos. Israel stops the boats in mid water by blocking their way or shooting out their rudders. Then it brings in a special small boat with enormous loudspeakers and plays Avraham Fried and Chassidic music at ear splitting volume next to all the boats until they take to the open seas and go back to Turkey.
5. Those offended by crudeness – do not open:
Tel Aviv University takes a stand, sort of:
1. Remember "Father" Capucci, the gun-running one-time archbishop of Jerusalem?
Greek Catholic (Maronite) archbishop Hilarion Capucci smuggled weapons for the PLO from Lebanon to Israel in 1974. He was arrested, jailed, but released under pressure of the Vatican. Pope Paul VI later said his time in prison had been endured "for peace and reconciliation among the peoples of the Middle East".
He's decided to join the "Free Gaza" flotilla terrorist joyriders.
http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=24930
background
http://christianactionforisrael.org/medigest/feb97/marafat3.html
http://www.washington-report.org/digital-issue/3085.html
2. Isi Leibler on leftists who whine about their critics being "McCarthyists":
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/Leibler/entry/bogus_pro_peace_organizations_undermine
University of Haifa - Ron Kuzar (Dept of English Literature) Stars at the Conference Demanding the Destruction of Israel
The University of Haifa event was evidently an initiative once again of the Arab student union. Held in the large Safdia Auditorium on campus with about 30 people in the audience, the "conference" consisted of two anti-Israel Arab speakers and one anti-Israel Jewish speaker. This is pluralism and balance these days in Israeli academia.
Kuzar states: "Israeli-Zionist ethnicity is an injurious discriminatory one inside Israel, a thieving and apartheid set of policies towards Palestinians."
University of Haifa - Ron Kuzar (Dept of English Literature) Stars at the Conference Demanding the Destruction of Israel
By Steven Plaut
27/5/2010
A year ago the Arab students at the University hosted the head of the Israeli Arab Islamofascist movement, the Sheikh Raed Salah. The Islamic movement is a poorly disguised front group for the Hamas. The Sheikh spoke to an audience in a lecture hall from which guards prevented by force Jewish students entering. The Sheikh called upon Arab students to become suicide bombers and to murder Jews. University officials falsely denied that guards had been ordered to prevent Jewish students from entering the hall in a cover-up.
Well, this year the very same University decided to host a sort of an encore for that event. On May 24, 2010 a "conference" was held at the University of Haifa about the importance and desirability of destroying Israel. Really. The official title of the conference was: "How to Resolve the Conflict? The One-State Solution – Moving from the Existing Situation to a Just Vision."
The translation of that for those unfamiliar with the term is this. When anti-Israel radicals use the term "One-State Solution," they mean a Rwanda-style solution in which Israel will cease to exist as a state and will be enfolded within a larger Arab-Muslim state, and in which ethnic differences and the existence of Jews will be resolved the same way ethnic problems were resolved in Rwanda. Other "conferences" on the best way to destroy Israel have been held elsewhere, including one at York University last year. The University of Haifa's Sami Smooha is a regular participant in these.
The University of Haifa event was evidently an initiative once again of the Arab student union. Held in the large Safdia Auditorium on campus with about 30 people in the audience, the "conference" consisted of two anti-Israel Arab speakers and one anti-Israel Jewish speaker. This is pluralism and balance these days in Israeli academia.
The speakers were Salman Natur, the "culture" editor of the Arabic newspaper of the Israeli communist party Alittihad, Raja Zuabi Omari, an anti-Israel activist, and Dr. Ron Kuzar, a senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Haifa. In the past Kuzar has promoted boycotts of Israeli institutions and came out against Israel's existence.
At the "conference," the first two speakers presented a boilerplate attack on Israel, Zionism and Jews. All the usual rhetoric was heard, about Israel being an apartheid state that had conducted ethnic cleansing of Arabs, one established in an unjustified and illegitimate way, one that has no right to exist, resembles the Nazi regime, about how "millions" of Palestinian refugees have the right to "return" to Israel, and so on. Later when one of the two or three Jews in the audience challenged Zuabi Omari to provide evidence that Israel had ever carried out any ethnic cleansing, she said she refused to do so.
All three speakers supported the elimination of Israel. Their "debate" was between the first two, who wanted it done today if not yesterday by force (Zoabi Omari called for a union between the PLO and Hamas to fight Israel), and Kuzar, who wanted it done in two stages. He proposed first two "democratic" states alongside one another, one for Palestinian Arabs and presumably the other for Israelis, and that these two would then merge into a nice new country that encompasses both. The new state would be post-Israel, and Kuzar repeated endorsed post-Zionism. All supported the idea of a "democratic secular state," the old slogan invented by the PLO that refers to the elimination of Israel and its replacement by an Islamofascist Arab state.
Ron Kuzar was the keynote speaker, the token Jew endorsing the anti-Israel political agenda. He has built part of his academic career writing about the "Canaanite" movement that operated in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, although how that counts as English literature escapes us. Be that as it may, this was a movement of Jews proposing that a new post-Jewish Israeli be created, one that could encompass erstwhile Arabs and former Jews, who would transcend their narrow ethnic-national-religious identities to become the New Israeli. Significantly the movement never had more than a handful of members and advocates, all of them Jews.
Kuzar in the past has stated publicly that he just studies the "Canaanite" movement as a phenomenon but does not consider himself one of the advocates of the "Canaanite idea." Well, he certainly put that claim to rest at the "One-State" conference on May 24. Oh, and lest he consider denying what we are about to cite, let us point out that Isracampus has Kuzar's words from the Destroy-Israel conference in the University on tape.
Kuzar began with his Canaanite argument that all ethnic identity and nationalism is evil, although did not offer any objections to it being the basis of 22 Arab countries. He switched back and forth freely between the word "Leumiut" or nationalism and "Leumanut" or chauvinism when referring to Zionism. He insisted that there are no nations on earth besides Israel that have an ethnic-nationalist identity, which raises some questions as to which planet he has lived on all these years. He insisted that all countries on earth are like the United States, a mere territorially-defined entity with no ethnic identity. [In reality of course, the United States is the great exception to what exists on earth.] He attempted to identify a second country that has "no ethnic identity" and mentioned France. We repeat, this is a person who is unaware that France is a nation-state and he teaches at the University of Haifa.
He then launched his broadside against Zionism and Israeli-Jewish ethnicity. He said:
"הלאומיות האתנית הישראלית-הציונית היא לאומיות פוגעת ומפלה בתוך ישראל, עושקת ונוקטת במדיניות של אפרטהייד כלפי הפלשתינאים."
Translation: "Israeli-Zionist ethnicity is an injurious discriminatory one inside Israel, a thieving and apartheid set of policies towards Palestinians."
Kuzar repeatedly referred to the Jews as oppressors and the Arabs as the oppressed. He described Israel's own Arabs as "in a sense under occupation/conquest." He denounced the evil (רוע) in Zionism, and repeatedly labeled it chauvinism. He called for a "New Israeli" (echoes of "Canaanitism") that would be a "shatnaz" of mixed identities in which Jewish Israelis would become partially Arabs and Arabs would become partially Jews, and curiously the Arabs in the audience failed to applaud this. None of the speakers, by the way, called for ending the existence of any of the 22 Arab nation-states.
Kuzar concluded by joining the first two speakers in insisting that it is "legitimate" to propose a "One State Solution" in which Israel would cease to exist.
Want to let the heads of Haifa University know what you think of all this? Write to
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
Rector-Elect:
David Faraggi
Fax: 972-4-8253849
E. mail: faraggi@stat.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
1. http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=176616
A Good title would be: Sink the Bismarck, er, uh, we mean the "Rachel Corrie"!!!
(A lousy title: A chutzpa to Corrie's memory)
By JUSTUS REID WEINER AND ITAI ERES
27/05/2010
Radical groups are hijacking her name for their purposes.
International "activists" are at it again. A nine-ship flotilla of "peace activists" is on its way from Turkey, Greece and other European countries toward the Gaza strip, laden with left-wingers and a variety of goods to supplement those available to Gaza residents. This represents the latest effort by a radical group known as the Free Gaza Movement (FGM). In an attempt to galvanize support and sympathy, and achieve a better result than the three earlier abortive attempts, the group has chosen to name the lead ship the Rachel Corrie.
For those who don't recall, Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old American student activist killed in a tragic accident in 2003 while attempting to block an IDF bulldozer.
Corrie arrived in Israel as part of an independent study program during her senior year at Evergreen State College. It was there that Corrie first heard of going to Gaza with the loosely affiliated assortment of left-wing radicals known as the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Evergreen's faculty also displayed gross negligence in allowing her to spend a semester abroad, for course credit, in the West Bank and Gaza during the height of the second intifada. After a mere two days of ISM "training," Corrie and her fellow activist trainees were sent to the Rafah crossing, described by IDF spokesman Capt. Jacob Dellal as "the most dangerous area in the West Bank and Gaza."
Ironically however, Corrie is perhaps a more apt reference than the FGM organizers realize. The tragedy of her death is that it was completely avoidable. Moreover, her behavior, flouting local and international law, raises the question of what role, if any, small groups of extremist activists have in interfering in the counterterrorism measures of a democratic state.
Despite dishonest testimony by the ISM, subsequent developments revealed that the driver of the bulldozer likely couldn't even see Corrie. The most startling discovery was the recklessness of the ISM in dealing with its volunteers. They were encouraged to prevent the demolition of buildings and smuggling tunnels by using their bodies as shields against trucks and bulldozers. Although the volunteers were provided with visibility vests and megaphones, it was only a matter of time before the folly of the ISM led to catastrophic results.
If playing chicken with cars is suicidal, doing so with an armored bulldozer, more difficult to control and with less visibility, borders on insanity. Yet that is exactly what the ISM advocated, while making sure to record all their encounters for use in the event of just such an accident. As one of Corrie's colleagues stated, "Several times we had to dive away at the last moment in order to avoid being crushed. This continued for about two and a half hours."
WHILE THIS may not have been exactly what Evergreen College envisioned as Corrie's independent study, the ISM was complicit in these dangerous antics, having promoted activism that would "more directly challenge the Israeli military."
The ISM views its volunteers as pawns in a political game, fully aware that some gambits require the loss of a pawn. Corrie's death, a terrible accident for the IDF, became a propaganda weapon for the ISM.
ISM is an organization that recognizes a Palestinian "right" to resistance via "legitimate armed struggle." Its "accolades" include preventing IDF demolition of bomb-making factories and weapons-smuggling tunnels as well as the aiding, abetting and protecting of terrorists. In addition, the ISM also encouraged confrontational, reckless resistance by its international volunteers.
In 2002, in the midst of a violent takeover of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem by Palestinian terrorists, 10 ISM members ran in to act as human shields. The same year as Corrie's death, a popular bar in Tel Aviv, Mike's Place, was attacked by two suicide bombers who had had tea with ISM members only five days earlier.
The ISM's behavior is typical of such radical groups. Purporting to protect human rights, they are often callous toward human life in general. What legitimacy is warranted by NGOs that have no respect for the lives of their volunteers?
Additionally, these groups fail to recognize that Israel abides by both local and international law. It has a well-developed judicial system, with the authority and will to limit its executive and legislative branches, one that has already delineated Israel's commitments, obligations and rights in Gaza. The potential harm to local interests and stability caused by the audacious interference of a handful of people from other continents is tremendous. Individuals in Europe or North America may read about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and wish to help, but chartering boats to sail to foreign waters is a misguided effort.
To promote their personal delusions, the ISM and FGM neglect any legal, judicial, diplomatic or otherwise politically palatable routes. While their personal risks are less than those taken by activists illegally entering Iran, North Korea or China, they still choose to waste public and private resources while violating domestic and international law.
The Rachel Corrie ironically represents a seaborne version of the organizational callousness and disregard that led to Rachel Corrie's death in 2003. With such dubious priorities, these activists continue to be a part of the problem, not a legitimate attempt at a peaceful solution. Instead of being embarrassed by their role in Corrie's death, these radical groups are hijacking her name for their current efforts to help Hamas dominate Gaza.
Let Rachel Corrie rest in peace.
Justus Weiner is an international human rights lawyer. He is currently a Scholar in Residence at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and an adjunct lecturer at the Hebrew University
2. That Bumsky, Chomsky
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/43878
Thoughts On Israel's Chomsky 'Ban'
By: Steven Plaut
Date: Wednesday, May 26 2010
It seems the only nation not allowed to ban people with belligerent, racist or hostile political views is Israel. Recently, MIT professor Noam Chomsky was prevented by Israel from entering the country via Jordan. Chomsky was on his way to give an anti-Israel speech at a university in Ramallah in the West Bank. (Instead he gave the speech by videoconferencing from Jordan.)
Chomsky had been in Israel for visits before, and the "ban" was evidently nothing more than some bureaucratic glitch in the instructions to Israeli border passport checkers. Chomsky was invited at the Jordan River to enter the country through the Tel Aviv airport. This did not prevent a worldwide campaign of anti-Israel vilification by the usual crowd blasting Israel for "banning" Chomsky, complete with denunciations of "Israeli fascism."
Chomsky himself denounced the Israeli decision to block his entry as "Stalinism." To tell the truth, when I first heard that Chomsky accused Israel of Stalinism I assumed he meant it as a compliment. Chomsky has gone out of his way to defend Stalin and publishes his articles on all the best Stalinist websites.
Ironically, the bureaucratic glitch resulted in Israel's accidentally doing the right thing.
Just a few individuals have been prevented from entering Israel because of their ties to terrorists or their involvement in anti-Semitic or anti-Israel political activities. One of them was Norman Finkelstein, the hatemonger fired by DePaul University, who was banned from entering Israel a couple of years back due to his public championing of Hizbullah terrorists.
Another was Richard Falk, the retired Princeton propagandist who's made a career out of denouncing Israelis as Nazis. Falk was denied entry into Israel as a UN "investigator," though earlier he had been allowed to enter as a private citizen.
In Chomsky we have someone who has pow-wowed with Hizbullah terrorists and promoted Holocaust deniers. Like Finkelstein and Falk, Chomsky has long led the campaign to boycott and "divest" from Israel.
The very same people who whined about Israel's refusing Chomsky entry into the country to engage in anti-Israel agitation were strangely silent when Britain banned 16 people on grounds they held politically incorrect opinions. These included radio host Michael Savage. Before that the UK banned Rev. Fred Phelps from entering the country because he is anti-gay. Few on the enlightened Left denounced the UK for fascism for those decisions.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders, a candidate for prime minister of the Netherlands, was barred from entering the UK because of his opinions. The Brits have banned a host of Israelis from entering their country, including activist Moshe Feiglin. Not a single Israeli leftist tearing out hair at the barring of Chomsky has spoken out against that.
The United States has banned all sorts of people, not limited to those suspected of having ties to terror groups. In some cases it was because of their political views. Journalist Robert Fisk was banned for that reason. Professor John Milios from Greece was banned. Tariq Ramadan, the darling of the pro-jihad Left, was barred until recently from both the U.S. and France.
Adam Habib, professor of political science and deputy vice chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, was barred from entering the U.S. for three years. Liberian President Charles Taylor and other leading Liberians were banned from entering the U.S. because of their support for rebels in Sierra Leone. Canada has also banned people because of their views or behavior, most famously George Galloway, the British member of Parliament who enjoyed close ties to Saddam Hussein.
Germany, Austria and some other European countries routinely ban neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers from entering their territories and sometimes jail them when they enter.
In the late 1970s, a professor of literature at the University of Lyon named Robert Faurisson wrote two letters to Le Monde claiming the existence of gas chambers in concentration camps used by the Nazis to exterminate Jews was a hoax. Faurisson was convicted of Holocaust denial and hate speech in two trials in France, in 1983 and 1990.
Faurisson has also suggested that the diary of Anne Frank is a Zionist forgery and has spent much of his career smearing Nobel Prize-winning Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
Noam Chomsky has long been Faurisson's most prominent defender. In the 1980s he signed a petition denying Faurisson was an anti-Semite and saluting Faurisson as a "respected professor."
In defending Faurisson, Chomsky wrote: "I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers or even denial of the Holocaust. Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the Holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence. I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work."
Personally, I would have let Chomsky enter Israel and then immediately arrested him for Holocaust denial (if not the Holocaust of the Jews then surely the genocide against Cambodians). Holocaust denial is illegal in Israel, though the law is never enforced against anyone, even Arab politicians. Indicting Chomsky would have made such a wonderful legal precedent.
1. You will all be pleased to hear that Noam Chomsky again met with the Hezbollah in Lebanon this week and attended a Salute to Nasrallah event - http://www.yalibnan.com/2010/05/23/chomsky-met-with-hezbollah-official-in-lebanon/ - evidently the same event in which Nasrallah called for bombing ships bound for Israel (see http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137702).
2. When does the Israeli Moonbatocracy NOT scream against destruction of Arab homes? See this: http://israeltheviewfromhere.blogspot.com/2010/05/house-demolitions-things-are-never-as.html
3. Well, one of the happiest events of the week – nay, of the year - was the (re-) sentencing of ultra-leftist shyster Shammai Leibowitz to 20 months hard prison time in the US. Leibowitz, the 39 year old grandson of the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz (himself a fascinating mix of serious knowledge of Judaism with leftist flakiness) is best known for his campaigns on behalf of Arab terrorists and his defending arch-murderer and terrorist Marwan Barghouti (with New Israel Fund money!!). Before that he was the lawyer of choice for International Solidarity Movement accomplices to the Hamas.
As you may recall, Shammai got himself into a jam in the US when the FBI discovered he was leaking to the media documents he had been hired by the same FBI to translate. Shammai has been living in the US (he has dual citizenship) and got a job working as a translator for the FBI. The fact that the FBI would hire this collaborator with terrorism from Israel tells you a lot about how much "intelligence" there is inside the skulls of the heads of the FBI these days.
Shammai had signed a plea agreement last year but evidently tried to back out of it. In it, he confessed to engaging in the leaking of sensitive documents to bloggers and to a pro-terror Palestinian group, the "Electronic Intifada." See http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2010/05/former-new-israel-fund-fellow-shamai-lei/
Anyway, evidently Shammai tried to back out of the plea and the matter went to DC court, where Shammai this week got sentenced to doing the 20 months he agreed to in his plea. Lawyer tricks did not help him this time.
Now here is a math problem for you. If Shammai gets 20 months in the US slammer for leaking two documents to the media, just how much jail time should the leftist spy Anat Kamm and her Haaretz handler Uri Blau, the current darlings of Israel's Left, get for stealing more than 2000 military documents and leaking their contents?
Why he was not given a sentence at least as long as Pollard's is not clear.
Well, yes, it IS clear. Evidently Shammai was spying for the Palestinians! Did he also leak materials to the New Israel Fund? Enquiring minds want to know!
I just love the idea of Shammai making license plates and serving as a prison sissy for some big tattooed gangbanger missing his front teeth and wearing gang colors. I will try to get you his prison mailing address in case you want to mail him a carton of cigarettes or maybe a cake with a rubber file inside?
See also this: http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/rosner/entry/shamai_leibowitz_and_the_crack
He has his own blog here: http://pursuingjustice.blogspot.com/
4. I have a confession.
I despise the TV show "Sex and the City," fantasize about slapping and then sending the characters in it to a nunnery, and think that Chris Noth should have ended his acting career getting shot in "Law and Order." The "Sex and the City" movies are even worse.
Nevertheless, I am suddenly tingling with delight that the four skanks in their new movie go to Abu Dhabi and upset the Islamists. Radical Moslem blogs are already threatening a new wave of violence against the offenders, which will recall their anti-cartoon riots.
See this. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/05/sex_and_the_cit_5.php and http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/25/muhammad-cartoons-everywhere/
I had a dream last night of Islamists throwing shoes at the visiting hussies - all Gucci designer shoes from Fifth Avenue.
5. "Elvis" Costello, a "singer" in the loose sense of the word, decided he is boycotting Israel and will not perform here. See http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3893595,00.html
I think we should all say a Birkat Ha-Gomel for being rescued from that imminent musical threat to our health and well being.
6. University of Haifa anti-Zionist "New Historian"; Discovers that Israel Itself Caused the 1973 Yom Kippur War because it refused to make peace with Egypt
7. Tel Aviv University - On anti-Semitic web site, TAU's Ran HaCohen (Dept of Comparative Literature) explains that Israel is "Colonizing" ... Israel
8. Tel Aviv University - Ariella Azoulay (Dept of Arts) has Nightime Fantasies about the Palestinian "Right of Return"