Steven Plaut

Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university.

Steven Plaut

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Thursday, March 29, 2012

Posted 3/29/2012 09:52:00 AM

1. Israel's encephalo-phobic Left has a brand new cause. It is all
upset because some soccer hooligans in Jerusalem ran into a nearby
mall after a soccer match and were screaming anti-Arab slogans there,
including "Death to Arabs." The Left is upset at this new
manifestation of Jewish racism and is holding protest rallies.

Hmmm. Well, let us first point out that the same leftists so upset by
these outbursts of soccer hooliganism have never had much to say about
Arab racism. Arabs do not just chant "Death to Jews," they also
murder Jews and cheer on those who murder Jews. Never a whisper of a
protest from any leftists.

Secondly, Israel has seen a mass of incidents in recent weeks in which
Arab street thugs assault and beat and try to murder randomly passing
Jews. These include the attempted lynch of two out-of-uniform
soldiers in Haifa, and several incidents in Jerusalem. (See
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4209530,00.html and this:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/154266 ) Arabs
throwing rocks at Jews have become so common that the media do not
bother reporting it. Not a single word about any of that from these
holier than everyone Leftist rally participants.

As far as I know, those Jerusalem soccer hooligans merely screamed
offensive slogans but never assaulted anyone. Screaming racist
statements against Arabs and against Jews has become common at Israeli
soccer matches, and is less political than simple beer-drenched
rowdiness. Soccer hooliganism is not exactly rare in the civilized
world and – if anything – its dimensions in Israel are smaller than in
the UK and the rest of the EU. No, of course I do not approve of the
hooliganism, and have in the past proposed that soccer hooliganism be
dealt with by passing a law that, after all such hooliganism, all news
reports about soccer games and all stadium commentary by MC's must be
in Latin for 6 months. Soccer hooligans themselves should be
sentenced to 18 months of Talmud study.

2. Speaking of the selective discoveries of "racism" by the Left: I
really liked this:
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/29/chasing-the-great-white-whale-of-american-racism/

Chasing the Great White Whale of American Racism
Posted By Ann Coulter On March 29, 2012
Even after the Duke lacrosse case, Texaco executives allegedly using
the N-word in private meetings — which turned out to be "St. Nicholas"
— the Tawana Brawley case, not to mention virtual hailstorms of racist
graffiti and nooses materializing on college campuses, all of which
invariably end up having been put there by the alleged victims, the
Non-Fox Media (NFM) didn't even pause before conjuring a racist plot
in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida last month. Like
Captain Ahab searching for the Great White Whale, the NFM is
constantly on the hunt for proof of America as "Mississippi Burning."
Over St. Patrick's Day weekend, the month after Martin was killed,
gangs in Chicago shot 10 people dead, including a 6-year-old girl,
Aliyah Shell, who was sitting with her mother on their front porch.
One imagines MSNBC hosts heaving a sigh of relief that little Aliyah
was not shot by a white man, and was thus spared the horror of being a
victim of racism.
As it happens, Trayvon Martin wasn't shot by a white man either, but
by George Zimmerman, a mixed-race Hispanic who lives in a diverse (47
percent white) gated community and tutors black kids.
But Hispanic is close enough for the NFM. They're chasing the Great
White Whale of racist America and don't have time to check to see if
the whale is actually a guppy.
Since the cat leapt out of the bag on Zimmerman being Hispanic, the
media have begun calling him a "white Hispanic."
Not being a race-obsessed liberal, I don't particularly care, but it's
indisputable that Zimmerman is brown. I saw his face carved on the
side of a Mayan temple in the Yucatan. Using his mother's maiden name,
he would be admitted to the University of Michigan law school on a
full scholarship.
Apart from that, pretty much all that is known with certainty is that
Zimmerman called the police to report a suspicious character in his
neighborhood, and shortly thereafter he shot and killed Martin.
On the basis of little else, the media conjured a Hollywood script: A
"white" man was "stalking" a little black kid — who could be Obama's
son! — confronted him, beat him senseless as the small black child
screamed for help, and finally shot the kid dead, "just because he was
black."Two weeks of nonstop hysteria later, it turns out that every
part of that gripping plot is based on nothing that could be called a
reasonable assumption, much less a fact.
The NFM's theory of the case might be true, just as it might be true
that the loud bang I just heard outside my door is Godzilla returning
to terrorize Manhattan. I, like the NFM, have no facts supporting my
theory. (Although mine is more credible because Al Sharpton is not
involved and none of my facts are provably false, such as the NFM's
claim about Zimmerman being "white.")
First of all, there's no reason to believe Zimmerman followed Martin
after the police told him not to, which is the linchpin of much
excited reporting.
Zimmerman told the police, his friends and his lawyer that he walked
back to his car after hanging up with the police and was waylaid by
Martin. No witnesses have told the press otherwise.
We don't know if -– as the NFM has baldly asserted — it was Martin
yelling "Help!" during the struggle. Before the case became a
nationwide sensation, the lead detective told the Orlando (Fla.)
Sentinel that the police had played all the 911 calls for Martin's
father, and he said the voice crying "Help!" was not his son's.
(The father has subsequently retracted that.)
Before the shooting was even a twinkle in the eye of MSNBC, an
eyewitness gave a detailed account to the local media, indicating that
it was Martin who was on top of Zimmerman, pummeling him, as Zimmerman
screamed "Help!"
The police report says Zimmerman's nose was bleeding and his back
covered in grass stains when they arrived at the scene. His lawyer and
friends say he was treated for a broken nose the next day.
There's no sense in arguing in public about such facts. The medical
records exist or they do not.
Of course, the information contradicting the media's fantasy comes to
us only in the form of witness statements and police reports appearing
in the press, not as evidence in a formal criminal investigation.
It's hard to tell where the NFM's suppositions are coming from
inasmuch as they simply report their version as hard fact. But all
their evidence seems to come only from Martin's family and girlfriend.
Can we start trying all criminal defendants based exclusively on the
testimony of the victim's friends and relatives?
Among the reasons to be suspicious of the media as impartial judges of
the evidence is that they keep showing us snapshots from Martin's
childhood, rather than any recent photos.
Without doing research, the average person would think Martin was a
slight 12-year-old whippersnapper at the time of the shooting, rather
than a strapping 6-foot, 160-pound 17-year-old. Indeed, he was 3
inches taller than Zimmerman, according to the police report.
Why aren't they showing us Zimmerman's baby pictures? (And why didn't
we get to see baby pictures of the Duke lacrosse players? I bet they
were adorable.)
CNN ceaselessly reported the allegation that Zimmerman could be heard
in the background of one 911 call using an archaic racial epithet.
Before playing the tape, correspondent Gary Tuchman first announced
what the slur was supposed to be ("f*****g coon").
There's nothing like suggesting the answer in advance to improve
reliability! Police should try that in lineups.
Then the same network that couldn't find the Jeremiah Wright tapes for
sale in a church lobby brought in "one of the best audio experts in
the business" to enhance the tape — take the bass away here, add
volume there — and played the 1.6-second loop again and again, just in
case you were not suggestible enough the first time.
Still, all that can be heard on the enhanced tape is "cha-chu,
cha-chu, cha-chu."
But Tuchman wrapped up this demonstration by saying, "You know, it
sounds like this allegation could be accurate, but I wouldn't swear to
it in court. That's what it sounds like to me."
To the small percentage of CNN's audience with triple-digit IQs, it
was comedy gold. The only thing missing was Tipper Gore playing the
audio backward to reveal satanic lyrics.
(Incidentally, the Nexis transcript of the indecipherable "cha-chu"
sound reads: "ZIMMERMAN: F*****g coons, f*****g coons. F*****g coons.
F*****g coons. F*****g coons." Except it doesn't use asterisks.)
All this may give you an inkling of why we rely on the criminal
justice system to determine guilt in criminal cases and not the fervid
imaginations of the race-obsessed media.

3. One of the goofiest sides of the Radical Left concerns the
obsessive political exhibitionism of radical leftists with regard to
the female genital parts. This manifests itself in the now ubiquitous
set of performances of the feminist "drama" called (excuse my French)
"The Vagina Monologues." See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vagina_Monologues. Check out the
part of that page about the case of Robert Swope!

This abomination is performed like clockwork or regular as
douching on college campuses, and it is hard to get away from it in
other places as well. It is also the cornerstone of the so-called
"V-Day" movement and its activities. I will give you a hint – the "V"
does not stand for Oy Vey. For details, see http://www.vday.org/home.
Most of us got over our urge to display and discuss our genitalia
around the same time that we learned to ride a tricycle. But not
these people.

Well, at one of the universities in Europe where I frequent, the
local feminists will be staging the "Monologues" and as part of the
promotion, they have announced that they will be offering people free
Vagina-shaped cupcakes.

Being a helpful sort, I distributed a mass campus inquiry as to
whether the feminists organizing the event will be asking people to
exhibit their progressive identification with the Third World by
performing female circumcisions on the cupcakes.

This might be a good time to re-post this:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/2274
From 2007:

Yuli Tamir Goes A-Snipping

Can the procedure be performed from the neck up?

Hold on to your -- er -- hats!
Before pouncing upon me for posting a tasteless spoof, let me forewarn
you that this is NOT a spoof. It is for real, and any nausea you feel
should be directed against the actual cause, not your humble
messenger.
Nevertheless you can check it all out for yourself. It is there in
black and white. Never mind that the Israeli mainstream media have
hidden the story for the past 11 years, trying to protect the rep of
the Labor Party's daffiest leader.
Israel's Minister of Education, Yael "Yuli" Tamir, has campaigned
publicly for the common form of female mutilation in the Third World
known as "Clitoridectomy." It means what you think it means. "Yuli,"
back in 1996 when she launched her campaign, was a Professor at Tel
Aviv University and had just joined Labor. Previously she had been
Shulamit Aloni's sidekick in the "RATZ" party. She was in the news
the past few weeks for proposing that Arab students in Israel learn
from textbooks that portray Israel's very existence and creation as a
"Naqba" or catastrophe.
The "Boston Review" is a left-leaning political and literary quarterly
in Boston, the sort "anarchists" read. In its summer 1996 issue it
ran Tamir's own article entitled, "Hands Off Clitoridectomy." Its
theme was that all those Westerners expressing revulsion at the
practice of slicing up female genitalia in certain parts of the world
are themselves evil insensitive chauvistic philistine racists.
Westerners should stop criticizing and allow the Third World to carry
on with its enlightened multicultural clitorectomies.
She rants thus in the article:
'In discussions about multiculturalism, clitoridectomy is now the
trump card, taking over the role once played by cannibalism, slavery,
lynchings, or the Indian tradition of Sati: "Is this the kind of
tradition you would like to protect?" liberals ask embarrassed
multiculturalists, who immediately qualify their cultural pluralism.
Clitoridectomy defines the boundary between us and them, between
cultures we can tolerate and those we must condemn....
'Furthermore, it seems clear that Western conceptions of female beauty
encourage women to undergo a wide range of painful, medically
unnecessary, and potentially damaging processes -- extreme diets,
depilation, face lifts, fat pumping, silicone implants. Of course,
adult women do these things to their own bodies, and, it is said,
their decisions are freely made. But would our gut reaction to female
circumcision be very different if it were performed on consenting
adults? It is not unlikely that girls at the age of 13 or 14, who are
considered in traditional societies as adults mature enough to wed and
bear children, would "consent" to the mutilation of their bodies if
they were convinced that marriage and children were contingent on so
doing. Many women who followed the tradition of Sati seemed to do it
as a matter of choice....
'But our own culture fosters false beliefs of a similar kind.
According to Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, some 75 percent of women
aged 18-35 believe that they are fat, whereas only 25 percent are
medically overweight.1 Still more heartbreaking is the fact that the
majority of the 30,000 women who responded to a Glamour questionnaire
preferred losing 10-15 pounds to success in work or in love. So the
fostering of such beliefs cannot differentiate their culture from our
own and explain our hostility to it....A fulfilling sex life is
certainly one good, but there are others. ...
'My purpose, however, is not to justify clitoridectomy, but to expose
the roots of the deep hostility to it -- to reveal the smug,
unjustified self-satisfaction lurking behind the current condemnation
of clitoridectomy. Referring to clitoridectomy, and emphasizing the
distance of the practice from our own conventions, allows us to
condemn them for what they do to their women, support the struggle of
their women against their primitive, inhuman culture, and remain
silent on the status of women in our society.'
We have a suggestion for the Olmert government. Remove the worst
embarrassment in the cabinet by performing a small procedure of
SNIP-SNIP!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Posted 3/18/2012 07:05:00 PM

1. The story about the leftist women cheerleaders for terrorism
getting their hooters grabbed and otherwise being molested by the
"Palestinians" is now available in English, here:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/israeli-and-american-leftists-face-sexual-harassment-assault-by-palestinians-they-aim-to-defend/

Warning: You may laugh so hard you need to change your shorts.

The story also appears on the BLAZE news site at
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/israeli-and-american-leftists-face-sexual-harassment-assault-by-palestinians-they-aim-to-defend/

None of the feminists upset by the molestation of these chicks when
they rally for jihad in the West Bank were upset by Bill Clinton's
behavior.

2. The leftist ultras now have a new slogan. As you know, there are
many pro-jihad homosexual groups now demanding that Israel be
annihilated, never mind how homosexuals are treated by the
Islamofascists. The Left has a new term for it when Zionists defend
Israel by pointing out that Israel is quite a tolerant place when it
comes to homosexuals, where violence and discrimination against
homosexuals in Israel are prohibited and rare, while they are
routinely murdered under Moslem regimes. When people DEFEND Israel's
record on homosexuals, the leftists call this "pinkwashing." Meaning
the Zionists are "white washing" Israel's treatment of "Palestinians"
by discussing its treatment of homosexuals.

Well, I have a suggestion. Any time any leftist even uses the
nonsense term "pinkwashing" in a sentence, we should all respond
loudly by demanding that leftists have their limp wrists broken.

3. You may have noticed that David Newman, the leftist hater of
democracy and enemy of freedom of speech who is pseudo-academic Dean
at Ben Gurion University and crayons columns for the Jerusalem Post,
had a column last week DEFENDING the granting of the Israel Prize this
year to Rabbi Haim Druckman. See:
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=261600

Newman is a radical anti-Israel leftist, while Druckman is a leader in
the religious Right. So is Newman suddenly in favor of pluralism and
diversity of opinion?

No, grasshopper. Druckman could never teach a course in the
department of politics at Ben Gurion University, Newman's home, or
even give a talk in a "conference" hosted by GBU. It is doubtful he
could speak before any other BGU audience. BGU is an institution
where only correct leftist opinion may be expressed and no Zionist or
non-leftist may address students of political science. Newman has
never invited Druckman, whom he "celebrates" in his Jerusalem Post
column, to lecture at Ben Gurion University. He just is pretending to
think that hosting diversity of opinion is nice when OTHER people or
other institutions do it, just as long as no one expects HIM to do it.

4. Meet an interesting guy:
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/meet-the-jewish-billionaire-who-studies-torah-every-morning-1.419038

5. SO the world just cut Iran off from SWIFT, the electronic payments
mechanism used for international transfer of funds, leaving the
Iranian barbarians as outsiders to modern finance. The Ayatollahs can
of course still shop with cash. And between you and me, the cutoff
does not really do anything because Iran will simply have
collecting/paying agencies in the West doing its financial settlements
for it, collecting its payments and making payments for it, diverting
everything to some western country. But the media and the Obama
people are all pleased with the results for the moment. See
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4204264,00.html

So here is a question. If cutting Iran out of SWIFT is such an
effective sanction against barbarism and a blow to its rep and
finances, then why not do the exact same thing with Gaza and the
Pestilinians? Gaza pays and collects all its payments using the
Israeli payments clearing system and the Bank of Israel, and through
them has access to SWIFT. Why not cut them completely off? Let the
Hamas buy its missiles with bags of coins and gumballs!! Let it pay
off its suppliers without any use of the payments clearing systems of
the 21st century!

6. When academic McCarthyists whine about McCarthyism:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4203449,00.html

7. I found this really interesting:
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/15/how-i-became-a-hate-group/

Friday, March 16, 2012

Posted 3/16/2012 03:37:00 PM

1. Comrades, I am afraid we cannot just delve into today's news
stories without some preparatory warm-up, because they all involve
matters of adult carnal activity, lust, territories south of the
border, misuse of gonads, and panky-hanky.

To get you into the right state of mind I cite the old jugband
music song (full lyrics here:
http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/t/takeyourfingersoffit.shtml )
about roaming fingers:

Man, take your fingers off it
Now don't you try to touch it
'Cause you know it don't belong to you

PG rating on what follows, for – after all – we are a family incitement service.

Israeli academic institutions are all sweaty and breathing heavily
over the latest scandal involving a professor and his female student,
engaged in, er, shall we say - pillowing. There have been quite a few
such stories, in which the professor gets to misuse his power to put
the student in a position (using that word in two or three different
senses) in which she has trouble saying no. We have seen previous
scandals at the Hebrew University involving faculty in the department
of sociology there accused by female students of molesting them or
even raping them. One of the faculty members, the far-leftist Eyal
Ben Ari, has been fired by the Hebrew University, constricting the
number of tenured far Leftist anti-Israel faculty members at the
Hebrew University by a fraction of one percent.

The newest scandal involves a professor at Tel Aviv University, who
conducted an affair with his female student. She later filed an
ethics complaint against him for taking advantage of the "unbalanced
power relation" between them. The university investigated, held
internal discipline committee indictments, and found the professor
guilty. He is now suspended and being docked some pay.

Haaretz reports the story in banner headline. Alas, it is not on the
English Haaretz site (yet) and other news sites have not yet reported
it. The news story can be read in full (Hebrew only) here:
http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/education/1.1665211

The big question here is who the perp is. In the past, most of the
tenured perps found to be groping, molesting and even raping the
female students were far leftist anti-Israel radicals. Haaretz is
being coy about who the current molester is, which makes me believe it
is one more leftist. Haaretz reported with glee every accusation
against a popular Rabbi accused of sexual misbehavior, never shy about
naming him. Israel being Israel, I am confident the name of the
pervert will leak into the web within a few days, and evidently oodles
of people at Tel Aviv University already know who it is. Once it
leaks, I will report it.

There are a couple of subtle "hints" in the Haaretz coverage. First,
Haaretz runs a giant photo of the Humanities building at TAU as part
of this news story, and it is pretty clear Haaretz is "signaling" its
readers that the events and the perp are in the humanities. Then in
the Hebrew Haaretz web site, Haaretz seems to have purposely left up a
talkback comment in which someone claims to have reason to believe
that the perp is actually the ultra-anti-Semitic professor of history,
the Stalinist pseudo-academic, Shlomo Sand, who claims the Jews were
never a people. Let me say that I have no evidence that Sand is the
one involved in the sexual scandal. I simply find it significant that
the Haaretz web site, which will censor, erase, and bar any talkback
comment that supports Zionism or the right of Israel to kill
terrorists, has decided to leave this talkback up, unaltered. Hebrew
readers can see the accusation in talkback 10 here:
http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/education/1.1665211. Under recent
changes in Israeli law, Haaretz could get its kafiyya sued off if the
talkback accusation is not correct.

The exact verdict of the disciplinary committee that convicted the
professor in question can be read in Hebrew here:
http://www.tau.ac.il/acad-sec/mishmat/seg-2011-1.pdf but without the
names of the professor and student being shown. The verdict is
pretty similar to the way it is reported in the Haaretz news story.

This is clearly a story worth following!

I suppose in the interests of candor I should point out that in the
early 1980s I taught at the Technion and dated a student there, not a
student in MY classes but a student nevertheless, married her 27 years
ago, and the "unbalanced power relation" that resulted manifests
itself to this day in me doing the dishes and the hoovering.

2. An even more-fun story is the latest news service revelation of
the wide-scale sexual harassment by Palestinians of Western women who
come to their villages to express their solidarity with Palestinian
terror and the right of Palestinians to murder Jews.

Large numbers of Western leftist chicks come jiggling through
Palestinian villages, places in which the local horny young men
ordinarily only get to see women behind scarves, bulky dresses and
worse. The jiggling gets their hormones running and the result has
been a series of rapes and molestations of the "solidarity"
protesters. The media have reporting these stories for years, but
Haaretz today runs a new expose about various young women from the
Anarcho-fascists Against the Wall and other anti-Semitic pro-terror
groups becoming the squeeze toys of the local terrorists. Even worse,
they are also being groped and worse by male leftist Israeli
"activists," also to be found in the Palestinian villages where they
throw rocks at Jews and other living things.

Now Israeli leftists would be the very first people on earth to insist
that all women have the right to walk through Meah Shearim and other
neighborhoods of Ultra-Orthodox "chareidim" in Jerusalem in thong
bikinis, and that any bearded black-coated religious man who makes any
comment about their dress should be whisked away for re-education in a
leftist Gulag camp. But the Left's only response to the many cases of
Western pro-terror women being molested and groped by Palestinians has
been to urge the lassies to dress more modestly and cover up a larger
portion of their anatomies. Feminism for some!

The delightful story of the Western and Israeli leftist "solidarity"
gals getting groped and worse by their Palestinians is in Haaretz
today, alas – only in the Hebrew edition and web site:
http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/law/1.1665119, where Hebrew readers can
chortle in delight over every syllable. I personally had to change my
knickers twice after reading it and laughing so hard.
The woman showed in the photo on that page is Hanna Beit Halachmi, -
active in the movement to prevent Jews from moving into the Simon the
Righteous neighborhood in Jerusalem and polluting it with their
presence. I believe she is the daughter of a far-leftist Professor of
Psychology at the University of Haifa, Benjamin Beit Halachmi
(sometimes spelled without the C).

There have been plenty of previous stories about anti-Israel
pro-terror "peace" activists being raped and harassed sexually by the
very same Palestinians they have come to clasp to their throbbing
bosoms (I warned you these stories would get racy!) . Here are a few
examples: http://elitestv.com/pub/2010/09/israel-are-peace-activists-harassed-by-palestinian-men-being-silenced
And http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/pa-protest-leaders-hushed-up-attempted-rape-of-u-s-activist-1.302015
(last one from Haaretz)

While Palestinians molesting the pro-terrorists sexually is not really
new, the Haaretz story reveals that numerous web sites of Israeli
far-leftist organizations (the ones propped up by the Eurotrash and
the New Israel Fund), have carried reports lately of terrorettes
(pro-terror female protesters) getting manhandled and worse by leftist
Israeli activists. In one, the girl complained that her attacker at
first seemed to have all the positive characteristics she was looking
for – (in her words) he was Post-Zionist, anti-capitalist,
post-colonialist, and so on. I know from her passionate description
of his many good qualities that I myself would have been happy to
allow him to plant a kiss on my lower left rear cheek below my belt!
The Anarcho-nazis against the Wall issued their own statement that
they plan to struggle against chauvinism and sexual abuse against
their members by Palestinians almost as passionately as they will
continue the struggle against Israel's existence.

Haaretz of course has an acute identity crisis when it comes to such
things. On the one hand, the paper tends to be ultra-feminist and so
is upset by the hankying and pankying against the pro-jihad
"solidarity activists" in the West Bank. But on the other hand, the
paper approves of violent Palestinian behavior towards Israelis and
Westerners in general. So the paper for thinking Israelis can never
be sure whether to approve of and explain away the harassment or to
condemn it.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Posted 3/14/2012 08:07:00 PM

Back to the future?

The following article came out in Midstream magazine, a North American
Zionist magazine, in 1988. It was actually written in 1987, making it
a quarter century old. I had by that time made aliya to Israel,
completely adjusted, and even was married with a baby at the time. I
will not reveal to you how many years older I am now, a quarter
century later.

Anyway, Midstream at the time was not on line, and few other things
were. I do not think this piece was fully published on line until
recently, but I stumbled across it on the educational resources page
of the World Zionist Organization. (Many years back I may have posted
a draft of it on my list and blog.)

I was hoping you would find it of interest:

http://www.resources.en.wzo.org.il/home/P102.jsp?arc=202518

On Zionist Youth Movements
About: This article is brought to you by the Hagshama Department
Author: Steven Plaut Originally published as: Published May 1988
Midstream, Subscription Dept. 633 3rd Avenue - 21st Floor New York, NY
10017

I grew up in a Zionist youth movement. Like most of the members of all
Zionist youth organizations, the movement itself played a central role
in my childhood and teen-age years, and perhaps even today exercises a
certain amount of influence upon me. For many years the movement was
the center of gravity in social matters. I have many fond memories of
those years; some of my closest friends today are old movement
comrades.

The movements, of course, strive to be much more than social
organizations. Each group has a specific agenda, with immigration to
Israel playing a particularly important role. Each has a political
self-definition and identity. Few other organizations could generate
in teen-agers and college students the same feelings of importance,
righteousness, and of serving the grand cause.

Today I am advancing reluctantly toward middle age (I said THAT in
1988!! -- SP). I am also an Israeli. I intend here to put aside
nostalgia in order to engage in a critical analysis of Zionist youth
movements from an adult perspective. I am sure many will not agree
with it; perhaps it may serve as a catalyst for dialogue.

Zionist youth organizations are worth discussing for the simple reason
that they are the future of and in many ways the most important bodies
within organized Zionism in the Diaspora. To some extent they produce
future Israelis, although this is not their sole function. At minimum
they are extremely influential over their own membership.

The weaknesses of the Zionist youth movements are so obvious when
viewed in retrospect through adult eyes that it seems hard to explain
why they have been and remain so difficult to identify for those
participating directly in those movements. I will discuss several of
these shortcomings that are in my opinion the most harmful and
disturbing.

I find the most problematic aspect of the Zionist movement in general
and of the Zionist youth movements in particular to be their divisions
and allegiances along the internal party lines of Israel. Each
organization seems to see itself as the overseas appendage of a
specific Israeli party, following that party's lead and line. Each
organization believes its raison d'etre is to act as a Diaspora base,
supplying personnel and political support for its Israeli counterpart.

This partisan politicization of the Zionist movement is in fact only a
natural extension to the Diaspora of the extensive over-politicization
of all aspects of life in Israel, upon which I have commented
elsewhere. Indeed it extends beyond the Zionist movement proper and
into the general Jewish (and occasionally non-Jewish) communities in
the form of partisan support for Israeli political organizations,
e.g., Peace Now, Gush Emunim, and so on.

Of all the problems that could and should be addressed by organized
Zionism in the Diaspora, or as I prefer to think of it - the Zionist
'opposition" within Diaspora Jewry, can think of none that would be
less relevant and less beneficial than the question of the "proper
stance" vis-a-vis Israeli elections. Affter all, what importance or
relation do these elections have to the issues facing Diapora Jewry,
to the questions of individual and communal Jewish identity, Jewish
education, assimilation, Anti-Semitism, or even aliyah?

The partisan mobilization consigns the Zionist movement to marginality
because it focuses energy and attention on elections whose outcomes do
not directly affect Diaspora Jews. The latter are by and large
ignorant of what those elections are all about and the issues at play.
In any case, election issues like monetary policy and urban planning
are not exactly the stuff from which dramatic Zionist rallying cries
are made.

Several Zionist youth organizations are associated with specific
kibbutz associations in Israel. I can recall impassioned debates among
American movement colleagues, sometimes running into the wee hours,
over the advantages and disadvantages of these kibbutz associations. I
would wager that not one Israeli kibbutz member in five can clearly
explain or cares the least about the differences among these
associations. (Perhaps the picture was different 50 years ago.) Among
non-kibbutz Israelis virtually no one knows or cares. Yet in the
United States the Zionist youth movements splintered and passionately
"battled" one another over such irrelevant lines of distinction.

It is ironic to note that the Israeli parties themselves receive very
little benefit from this Diaspora politicization. For example, the
flow of American immigrants to kibbutzim is minuscule; many who join
are not movement graduates, and some are not Jewish. Of movement
graduates who join kibbutzim, many subsequently leave, and many also
leave Israel. The net increment (inflow minus outflow) from all
overseas youth movements to all kibbutzim together is at most a few
score per year, and probably at times is negative. Financial support
from the Diaspora organizations to their Israeli counterparts is also
small, and in some cases it too is probably negative on net. Even the
political support for specific Israeli parties generated in the
Diaspora by Zionist and non-Zionist organizations is not of great
value, given the natural (and usually justified) inclination of
Israelis to dismiss as meddling attempts from abroad, including those
from Zionist Jews, to preach to them about their political
alternatives.

These anachronistic partisan loyalties condemn much of the Zionist
youth movement to impotence and render it unable to exploit the scale
economies and momentum that would accompany organizational
amalgamation. Even religious distinctions would not stand in the way
of amalgamation as party loyalties do. American Jews are generally
much more tolerant of one another's religious (or non-religious)
inclinations than are Israelis; the religious heterogeneity of most
Diaspora Zionist organizations is a testament to the feasibility of
amalgamation.

Another major problem of the Zionist movements is the role assigned to
aliyah and the way in which the "aliyah issue" is represented. I say
this not because I think aliyah is unimportant (I think it is
important) nor because I think American Jews should not make aliyah (I
think they should). The problem is that aliyah is a major life
decision, something on the same order of magnitude as marriage or
parenthood. In the youth movements, however, it has been reduced to a
slogan.

People do not make life decisions -at least not successful ones- on
the basis of slogans. Aliyah must stem from a careful examination of
one's goals, ideology, religious outlook, world-view, etc. It is
really not a one-shot "decision," but rather an ongoing chain of
decisions that continues long after physical relocation to Israel.

Even serious and well-considered aliyah decisions often end in reverse
migration within a few years. Frivolous aliyah decisions seldom
succeed.

Part of the problem is that the Zionist youth movements, while
excessively aliyah-centered, are insufficiently Jewish- and
educationally-centered. Herzl once said that in order to get the Jews
out of Egypt Moses first had to get Egypt out of the Jews. The Zionist
organizations cannot hope to create an aliyah stream unless they first
succeed in a campaign of serious Jewish education. Aliyah is a
byproduct of deep Jewish commitment and consciousness. Because there
is little Jewish consciousness, and weak Jewish identity, there is
little aliyah. Interestingly, this is very poorly understood in
Israel. Israel continues to pour significant amounts of money into the
network of shlichim (emissaries), whose function is supposed to be the
encouragement of aliyah. A cabinet minister for absorption is also
supposed to be working at encouraging aliyah.

Perhaps it is time to re-examine the effectiveness of the shaliach
idea. In most cases, the shaliach supplies some technical information
or expedites some bureaucratic chore involved in aliyah - but it is
rare that he or she inspires the decision to make aliyah itself. To
increase aliyah, fundamental Jewish identity issues must be addressed.

The 'sloganization" of aliyah in the youth movements has a number of
negative repercussions. When aliyah is the central focus of youthful
enthusiasm, many forget to ask the obvious next question, "After
aliyah, what?" There are many movement graduates who optimistically
made the immigration decision completely unprepared for life and
career thereafter.

Zionist youth organizations are in many cases indifferent toward
career preparation and in some cases downright hostile toward it. In
the kibbutz-oriented movements career goals are often considered
ideologically impure, or are at least relegated to secondary
importance, since the future oleh is to dwell in an agricultural
communal proletariat. Many seem to have been convinced that in kibbutz
life skills, training, and education are expendable. Of course they
are not. And in Israeli life outside the kibbutz confines, these
things are certainly no less vital than they would be in America.

When aliyah is seen as the grand solution, other life problems may
remain unaddressed. It is a truism among veteran olim that every
single problem someone has before aliyah will remain with him after
aliyah, with some new ones to boot. Life in Israel can be extremely
rewarding, but no one claims that it is easy. It is probably
impossible really to prepare someone for many of the tribulations of
absorption. But to tackle absorption without some direction in terms
of one's professional goals means that additional life crises and
problems must be tackled at the same time.

There are countless stories about movement graduates who have
immigrated to Israel, joined kibbutzim, and then - ten years down the
line - leave the kibbutz only to find themselves unskilled,
under-qualified, bereft of savings, and with a family to support.
Under these circumstances it is not surprising that many leave Israel
altogether. Given a choice between a fresh start in America vs.
blue-collar or low-rung clerical work and salary in Israel, few
breadwinners over 30 will choose the latter. (And that was BEFORE
most kibbutzim in Israel went bankrupt - SP)

In some of the youth movements the urgency with which aliyah is
stressed means in effect that immigration takes place by age 20 or so,
or else it is "too late." This reminds me of how single women past a
certain early age are relegated to spinsterhood in some societies.

To arrive in Israel armed with professional skills, or at least with a
clear decision about career direction, is to win half the battle. It
also makes aliyah a more rewarding experience. The youth movements do
not seem to have digested the fact that Israel's swamps have been
drained and its roads have been built. The pioneering challenges of
today have changed. Israel of the 1980s is an advanced modern society
full of problems. The modern pioneer, the immigrant who wishes to
devote himself to attempts at resolving those problems, needs more
than the fervor of his Zionist commitment. He needs skills, degrees,
training and of course infinite patience and energy, to succeed.

Ninety-seven percent of Israelis have voted with their feet against
kibbutz life. Kibbutzim are increasingly marginal to Israeli society
in all senses. Small-town agricultural communal life is in many ways
the most unnatural and the most difficult to adapt to for those raised
in urban, individualist, Western society. The centrality of the
kibbutz for so much of organized Zionism often backfires in that it
steers many away from urban and suburban life-styles available in
Israel, the ones chosen by the vast majority of the Israelis, the ones
most amenable for a Western Jew. I am behind those who choose to live
on kibbutzim. I am also behind those who choose to live in urban or
suburban Israel. There is nothing morally superior about the former.

The aliyah issue is actually only one side of a more general problem,
namely the role of "youth" and of the youth movement. This is
particularly manifested in the attitudes of youth organizations and
their members toward the relative importance of education vs.
activism. The movements revel in the idea that education, or at least
Zionist education, can and should be completed by the late teens, if
not sooner. Thereafter the movement member becomes an educator and
activist. The result is a population of teen-agers and those in their
early twenties convinced that they already know all there is to know
(at least all that is important to know) about Israel, Zionism,
Judaism, politics, sociology, etc.

Such an attitude is of course a sure path to intellectual shallowness
and closed-mindedness, and perhaps even anti-intellectualism. Somehow
the idea gets conveyed in the youth movements that solutions and
answers are possible without serious, long years of deep and difficult
analysis and experience. For college-age movement members, Zionist
activities often consist of campus activism and agitprop, but not
serious education and learning. Many of them move to Israel thinking
they have the answers to Israel's problems in their suitcase.

The feeling that answers are already known to movement seniors is
reflected in other ways. Among the Zionist movements, several define
themselves as Socialist, and at least one as Marxist. Members and
individuals in other organizations also sometimes follow Leftish fads.
Zionist youth movement graduates have always been active on the far
Left of the political spectrum, both within Israel and on American
campuses. For some, the transition from the Zionist Left to just plain
campus Leftism (and anti-Zionism) comes easily -another symptom of the
shallowness of movement education.

Marxism, of course, has taken on more of the trappings of a cult than
of a serious social science and "Socialism" is no more than the slogan
of the economically illiterate. The continuing romance with Socialist
rhetoric by so much of the Zionist movement damages that movement in
many ways. Though this is not the place to go into details, I believe
the main source of Israel's economic difficulties is the continuing
attempt by its political elite to run the economy along Socialist
lines. The last thing Israel can use is more "Socialism," that is,
more bureaucracy, regulation, government control of the economy, and
taxation. Immigrants who come to Israel with Socialist banners become
part of the economic problem, not the solution. Ironically,
"Socialism" as a slogan and ideal is dead in Israel for virtually all
those outside of the kibbutz, and perhaps even for many inside.
Socialist preaching is a sure method for being dismissed as irrelevant
or just ignored.

Within the Diaspora it also hinders the positive role the Zionist
organizations can play. The bulk of the non-Orthodox community has
replaced Jewish self-interest and survival with the American liberal
agenda as their political identity, indeed as their religion. The role
of Zionism should be to confront American Jewish assimilationism and
present an alternative based on Jewish interests. By singing Socialist
tunes the Zionist movement ends up playing the role of Left-wing
opposition within the Jewish community, rather than Zionist
opposition. "Zionists" are then no more than Jewish liberals in a
hurry. In some extreme cases, movement graduates migrate into the
Leftist anti-Zionist opposition groups within the Jewish community.

I have been speaking very critically, perhaps severely, of organized
Zionist youth movements. I hope my intentions are not misconstrued. I
think that in small doses the movements do some positive things, and
there is potential for doing much better.

The way for organized Zionism to expand its role and its contribution
is to amalgamate its various youth organizations into a very small
number of broad and non-political organizations (preferably just one).
Organized Zionism should divorce itself from Israeli electoral
politics and from kibbutz associations. Its political stance, to the
extent that it should have any, should be supporting the broad Israeli
electorate on those matters for which consensus exists. Its role
within the Diaspora should be first and foremost educational. Its
activism within the Jewish community should be over issues of Jewish
self-interest and not the American electoral questions of Right and
Left. Israel should play a central role. Aliyah should be discussed,
even encouraged, but its complexities and difficulties, too, should be
addressed. The idea of spending at least part of one's life in Israel
should be promoted, but not as a slogan, Education should be a
serious, professional, continuing process. Finally, the causes of the
Left liberal political agenda may or may not be justified on their own
grounds. Regardless, they are not the causes of Jewish self-interest,
the Zionist agenda. This should be made crystal clear to all by those
in the Zionist movement; first and foremost, they must learn it
themselves.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Posted 3/10/2012 10:44:00 PM

Purim is the holiday in which Jews celebrate the killing of
anti-Semites. While it has been hijacked by the dark forces of
political correctness in recent years, who attempt to convert it into
anything from a day for women's liberation to Kum-ba-ya niceness among
peoples, it is clearly a day that commemorates the killing of
anti-Semites. It is not even the holiday of the rescue of Jews from
threats of annihilation. We know that from the date of Purim. The
actual rescue of the Jews was in the month of Sivan, about nine months
before Purim, when the writs of Hamas to massacre the Jews were
cancelled. The date of Purim is set for when the Jews finished
killing off the anti-Semites who had earlier threatened them. That,
indeed, is why "Shoshan Purim" in walled cities is a day later,
because the Jews there took an extra day to kill off the anti-Semites
near them.

Purim time is the best time of the year for killing anti-Semites.
That is why the cleaning operation in Gaza today was so spectacular,
in which 15 terrorhoids were dispatched to their virgins, including
Zuhair al-Qaissi, the arch-murderer commander of the Islamofascist
"Popular Resistance Committee," the group that kidnapped Gilad Shalit.
The anti-Semitic media are of course calling al-Qaissi a dead
"militant," as if all he ever did while alive was march to save the
whales. That is because the anti-Semitic media approve of terrorists
murdering Jews.

Any day in which vermin like al-Qaissi are killed is a Jewish holiday,
but in this case it fell right after Purim, Israeli children still
wearing their costumes, to make the celebrations all the more festive.

Now all that is left is to decide what to do with the murderer's
carcass. I have started to come up with ideas, but someone should
really put out a book about the 101 things to do with a dead
Islamofascist terrorist, based on that book about 101 things to do
with a dead cat.

Thirty Three Inspired Ideas of What to do with al-Qaissi's Carcass

1. Upset the environmentalists by using it to poison piranha fish.

2. Use it to help boost Purina's stock value.

3. One word: McNuggets.

4. Give it tenure at Ben Gurion University.

5. Fire it off into space so Barry Chamish's UFO friends will never want
to visit earth again.

6. Clone it and sell the spinoffs as 21st century scarecrows.

7. Pretend it is Rachel Corrie and run a bulldozer over it.

8. Save Holland by using it to plug the dikes.

9. Let it occupy Wall Street with a sign reading "Will Terrorize for
Food".

10. Market it as a carpet beater.

11. Let the US javelin team train on it for the Olympics.

12. Makes a great speed hump.

13. Tie it to a pole and use it as the bait at the dog race track.

14. Send it to the Harvard BDS leaders.

15. Enroll it in the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Seminary. Heck, it
already has taken more Rabbinic courses than Michael Lerner.

16. Halloween Decoration.

17. Clearicil could use it in its commercials to show what happens if
you use the inferior brand.

18. Export it to France as a wine supplement.

19. Sell it as organic produce in Berkeley.

20. Tie it to the back of cars for newlyweds in MTV commercials.

21. Use it to scare your kids when they refuse to clean their rooms.

22. Sell it as a Yigal Tomarkin original sculpture.

23. It gives people 101 reasons to prefer having a dead cat.

24. Use it to become the patron saint for dung beetles.

25. Sell it to that Museum in Sweden that ran the "Snow White Pure" sculpture.

27. Enter it in the Texas State Cow Chip Toss as the world's largest cow
chip.

28. Make it the drummer in a punk rock band. Or better yet, the drum.

29. Tell Anna Nicole Smith it is rich.

30. "Fear Factor" TV show could make people sit on a bench next to it.
.
31. Put it in an envelope and send him to the Elect Ralph Nader
committee.

32. Let Brandeis hire it for its peace and justice studies program.

33. Rent it to Cubans as a device to hold their place in the bread line
while they go off fishing.

Saturday, March 03, 2012

Posted 3/03/2012 09:34:00 PM

Once Upon a Time there was an Adorable Little Country named Israel
By Steven Plaut

Once upon a time there was an adorable little country named
Israel. It was a unique country of Jews. It was a thriving young
country. The adorable little country also had a government,
consisting only of the wisest of leaders.

Then, soon after it was born, those wise leaders of Israel granted
the right to hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees, later calling
themselves "Palestinians" to return to live within the borders of
Israel from the neighboring countries to which they had fled during
the War of Independence. And so the portion of the country's
population composed of Jews declined.

After the Six Day War, large numbers of "Palestinians" living in
the West Bank and Gaza managed to attain the right to live in Israel's
territory from before the war, and other "Palestinians" were granted
to right to move into the West Bank and Gaza from other places where
they had been living. And so the portion of the country's population
composed of Jews declined.

Later the wise leaders of the country granted Vietnamese "boat
people," ethnic Chinese refugees escaping Vietnam after the communist
takeover, the right to live in the country. After all, said the wise
leaders, who knows better than the Jews the tribulations of being a
refugee. And so the portion of the country's population composed of
Jews declined.

When the civil war broke out in Lebanon, the wise leaders of the
country granted some Lebanese the right to escape their strife-torn
country and move to Israel. And so the portion of the population
composed of Jews declined. Later the members of the Southern Lebanese
Army, after Israel under Ehud Barak betrayed them and abandoned them
to their fates in Lebanon, were granted the right to live in Israel.
And so the portion of the country's population composed of Jews
declined. When civil war tore Bosnia to smithereens, the wise leaders
offered some of the Bosnians refuge in the adorable country, including
Bosnian Moslems. And so the portion of the country's population
composed of Jews declined.

When things got tough in the Sudan and Sudanese of different
creeds and races were massacring one another, the wise leaders of the
country granted huge numbers of them the right to move to Israel. The
wise leaders tuned a blind eye, as countless thousands slipped across
the unguarded border of the adorable country to make their homes in
Israel. They of course had to pass through Egypt to reach Israel, and
no one was murdering them in Egypt, but they were allowed into Israel
anyway. And so the portion of the country's population composed of
Jews declined. When other African learned of the deal, thousands of
them joined in the trek to the adorable country, sometimes pretending
to be Sudanese. And so the portion of the population composed of Jews
declined.

When Bashar Asad started massacring his own people in the last
months before his regime fell, tens of thousands of Syrians were
allowed to enter the adorable country on grounds that this was the
humane thing to do, and that a country of Jews could not turn its back
to refugees escaping tyranny and seeking safety. Israel became the
largest home for Alawis in the world. When there were proposals later
to repatriate the Alawis back to Syria, the adorable country's poets,
writers, journalists and professors all objected. How can Israel
expel Alawi CHILDREN? they moaned. These innocent children had lived
for years as Israelis and knew no other life. It would be inhuman to
deport them, almost as inhuman as were similar efforts earlier to
deport the Sudanese. And so the portion of the country's population
composed of Jews declined.

When the Iranian regime was annihilated in Operation Alexander,
with American, NATO, and other allied forces destroying the country's
nuclear stockpiles and liquidating the Islamofascist ruling class
there, hundreds of thousands of Iranian civilians trekked across the
deserts to demand refuge and warm beds in Israel. The wise leaders of
the Jewish state insisted that no Jew could turn down the pathetic
sufferers. And so the portion of the country's population composed
of Jews declined.

When the North Korean regime was overturned in a bloody revolt
and civil war, millions of starving refugees arrived by the ship-full
at the ports of the adorable Jewish state. We demand to be allowed to
enter, they wailed. They were joined by millions more Tibetans,
escaping the ethnic cleansing that the Chinese regime was implementing
against them. Along with them came hundreds of thousands of Kurds
escaping oppression, myriads more Burmese, Congo-ese by the bus load,
Greeks escaping the enormous taxes implemented to extract that country
from bankruptcy, Gypsies from all over Europe, and the entire
population of Moldova.

And after helping so many groups of people, after absorbing so
many sets of refugees, after solving so many of the world's problems,
there were no longer any wise leaders to govern the adorable little
state. Because the adorable little state had ceased to exist
altogether. It had humanitarian-ized itself into oblivion.

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Posted 3/01/2012 12:53:00 PM

1. Samizdat Now!!

It is not the most alarming news story in the country, in fact it is
in many ways rather trivial, but it illustrates a lot of what is wrong
with Israel under the helm of Bibi Netanyahu.

Israel has just formally introduced literary bolshevism into the
country, and it is part of the government's capitulation to pressures
from Israel's writers to implement market bolshevism for books. Book
prices are to be controlled by a governmental Soviet. Competition
among book sellers is to be suppressed. And pointy-headed government
regulators are to dictate contract terms between authors and
publishers. Book publishing is to be more regulated than it is these
days in Russia and other post-Soviet countries.

It is all part of a public pressure campaign by Israeli literati,
almost all of whom are also far-leftist bashers of Israel. They have
been unhappy about their royalty checks. Typical contracts with
publishers in Israel give the author a percent of sales revenues as
their royalties, although no one is forcing any writers to agree to
such contracts and no one is stopping them from demanding other
contractual terms. Anyhow, even though book retailing in Israel is a
near monopoly (controlled by the Steimatzky chain), there are some
downward pressures on prices, especially as non-print technologies
grow in sophistication and popularity. The little competition in book
sales at the margin sometimes produces price cuts and bargain sales,
and this eats into the royalties of the authors. For years they have
been demanding Soviet style price controls to prevent this from
happening.

The new bolshie law was drafted by Likudniks. Limor Livnat from
"Ministry of Culture and Sports" (talk about Bolshevik
bureaucracies!!), the Ministry of Justice (the Minister of which is
now suddenly about to be indicted for tax evasion), and even an
economist who should know better but is evidently willing to endorse
bolshevism for a price, Prof. Eugene Kandel from the Hebrew
University, Bibi's economic advisor. Amazingly, his PhD is from the
University of Chicago (as in Milton Friedman)!!

The new law sets minimum levels of royalties that publishers need to
pay authors, which will effectively price out of the market most new
and non-leftist writers. It prohibits discounts on books by
retailers, giving Israeli consumers a Likud boot up the ole toochis.
It dictates and micro-manages how retailers have to arrange their
merchandise on shelves, in order not to give certain publishers
preferential visibility. (Maybe Bibi's book about how the government
should not control markets should be required to be in all store
windows, alongside books by Stalin!)

And all this from a government that on paper is pledged to free
markets and economic liberalism!

What is one to make of all this? Well, in my opinion, this Bolshevik
assault on the Israeli consumer deserves to be met with civil
disobedience. True, there were calls for a consumer boycott of
cottage cheese producers last year when the semi-monopoly for cottage
cheese jerked up prices. But most people do not have access to milk
cows outside the kolkhoz to make their own cheese.

My proposal is that as long as this bolshevik oppression is on the
books, Israeli consumers should fight back with piracy. (Those who
recall my earlier articles about Jewish pirates of the Caribbean
should consider this a call to join that rich tradition!) As long as
book prices are being bolshevized and manipulated by Israel's central
planners, Israeli consumers should fight back by utilizing all the
considerable advanced technology, making Israeli literary works
available to others electronically and otherwise, without being
subject to the controls of the literary Soviet. In other words, just
like in the darkest days of the Soviet Union, I hereby call for a
campaign of samizdat, underground distribution of literature in ways
beyond the control of the bolsheviks. We must strike at the power of
the Literary Soviet in Israel!

Samizdat Now!

2. On the day after the attempted lynching in Haifa by Arabs of two
Jewish soldiers, Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper printed in Hebrew,
buried the story on page 10 and made it sound like a case of mistaken
identity by street criminals. So if this was page 10 news, what was
front page news? The answer is that day there was no front page.
Haaretz cancelled it. Instead it ran a sappy whiney essay by
far-leftist author David Grossman (speaking of literary bolshies). It
also had no news on page 2, which in recent weeks has been where
Haaretz places its anti-Israel Op-Eds. The good news seems to be
that lots of Haaretz readers were outraged by the stunt and there are
rumors flying of cancelled subscriptions.

Meanwhile, we wonder if the attempted lynch in Haifa has anything to
do with the politics of the Haifa Mayor. Hizzonuh is Yonah Yahav,
from the Shinui-Green left-leaning party. While running as a
reformist "clean candidate" who would clean up the sleaze of Amram
Mitzna, the Haifa municipality continues under Yahav to operate one of
the most corrupt municipal machines on the planet, one that would be
an embarrassment even in the Third World. Hizzonuh has allowed PLO
flags to fly over the "Jewish Arab Center" in Haifa, and just issued a
statement endorsing the decision by Supreme Court Arab judge Salim
Jubran (or Joubran, who is from Haifa) to refuse to sing Hatikva.