Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university.
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filing of a formal diplomat complaint with Israel over the comedy
shtick by Israeli super-comedian Eli Yatzpen. You can see Yatzpen
dressed as Mubarak here:
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:Kh0GeS_oAa8DIM:http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EevorcYaADs/default.jpg
and in actionas Mubarak here at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EevorcYaADs
[For those of you not familiar with the Great Yatzpen, here he is as
the Sheikh Yassin of the Hamas:
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ZAr29P-3Catl4M:http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IwWNMVIkSKc/0.jpg
Here he is as the head of the Taliban:
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:jzGFOGoLJoRHhM:http://www.glatube.com/Images/VideoPictures/41.png]
Of course, complaining about the Great Yatzpen was not the only
incident in which Hosni Mubarak showed his colors. For all intents
and purposes, Mubarak led a low-level surrogate war against Israel
during all the years of his regime. He did so through the Hamas.
Every single weapon, every bomb, every missile that reached the Hamas
and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza was sent there by Mubarak. Every
Israeli murdered by the Hamas was in fact a victim of Mubarak.
I find it intriguing that the entire "revolt" in the Arab world was
triggered by an attempt to remove bread subsidies. In Tunisia, and
then spreading, although Egypt has also had riots in the past when the
government attempted to reduce the subsidies (see
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/world/africa/17bread.html) .
The attempt to remove subsidies in the 1790s triggered the worst
excesses of the French Revolution; it created the Jacobin Terror and
brought Robespierre to power. And France back then did not even have
any Islamists to engage in terror, indeed the Revolution attempted to
suppress religion.
I am as troubled as the rest of us about the dangers of the Islamists
taking power in Egypt, Talibanizing it, and converting it into a
jihadist state. If this happens, I can imagine World War III
resulting from it. I also am aware that Egypt is the center for the
Arab enlightened, the leading society for science and literature and
education and cinema and music and philosophy in the Arab world. Of
course Germany was all those things in Europe.
While there are obviously many emotions and motives mixed in the
revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, the most common trigger seems to be
frustration with the economic situation, which really means the
consumer situation. Ironically, a necessary but not a sufficient
condition to elevate these countries out from their poverty is to free
markets and remove subsidies. But having subsidized so long, it now
appears politically suicidal to remove the subsidies, and fiscally
suicidal to leave them in tact. (Again, a very close repeat of the
French Revolution!) In the French revolution, crop failures triggered
the bread crisis. This year it is Russian cutbacks of wheat exports.
Let them eat cake. Mubarak's attempt to pull a North Korea and crown
his son as his own successor also did not help him.
Beware of those chanting that the solution is democracy, even
followers of Natan Sharansky. In the Arab world, democracy often
brings jihadists to power, much like democracy brought Hitler to power
in 1933. World War II was created by "democracy" in Germany. World
War III could be created by "democracy" in the Arab world.
Jewish Israel-Bashers And Dead Grandmothers: A New Mormonism?
By: Edward Alexander
Date: Wednesday, January 26 2011
Jews have long objected to the Mormon practice of "vicariously"
converting their deceased ancestors to the Mormon faith, a practice
that has seemed to them more brazenly dogmatic than the worst excesses
of the Inquisition.
But now it seems that Jewish Israel-bashers, people who define their
"Jewishness" almost entirely by their repudiation of the Jewish state,
have developed their own brand of Mormonism. It consists of converting
deceased Zionist grandparents (especially of the female sort) to their
own pseudo-religion, which starts from the premise that when a person
can no longer be a Jew, he (or she) becomes an anti-Zionist.
In the December 21, 2010 issue of the National Post (Canada) the
astute journalist Barbara Kay expressed the hope that "after I have
shuffled off this mortal coil, none of my granddaughters will turn
into useful idiots for a rotten political movement riddled with
anti-Semitism." Kay was alluding to two unusually foul volleys of fire
and vitriol shot in the direction of Israel and its Jewish supporters
by two Canadian Jewish women, Jennifer Peto and Judy Rebick.
Peto, a 29-year-old activist on behalf of lesbian and anti-Zionist
causes, has gained notoriety for a master's thesis with the bombastic
title "The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the
Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education," submitted to and approved
bythe "sociology and equity" cranny of a minor branch of the
University of Toronto called Ontario Institute of Studies in Education
(OISE).
In its regurgitation of hoary anti-Semitic tropes directed at "Jewish
privilege," "Jewish racism," and the "apartheid" state of Israel, the
thesis reminded many of the pseudo-scholarly materials studied (and
brilliantly dissected) in Max Weinreich's Hitler's Professors (1946),
a book that showed how German academics were the first to make
anti-Semitism both academically respectable and complicit in murder.
Peto's malice toward Jews and Israel knows no bounds. Jews who wish to
remember the Holocaust are "racists" (an epithet without which she
would be rendered nearly speechless) who want to monopolize all that
beautiful suffering which other, especially darker skinned, peoples
would very much like, ex post facto, to share.
Israel - not only a country where Arabs and Jews share the same buses,
beaches, clinics, cafes, soccer pitches, and universities, but the
only country in history to have brought thousands of black people to
its shores to become citizens and not slaves - is for her the
quintessentially "apartheid" state. Chief among the multifarious
abominations Peto imputes to the wily Jews is "Hegemonic Holocaust
Education."
Professor Werner Cohn, the first to call attention to the scandal of
Peto's thesis (and the still greater scandal that her academic
adviser, one Sheryl Nestel, routinely encourages and approves such
theses), noted that Peto uses the word "hegemonic" 52 times but
defines it just once: "I am defining hegemonic Holocaust education as
projects that are sponsored by the Israeli government, and/or
mainstream Jewish organizations." Since Peto thinks (mistakenly) that
"hegemonic" is a pejorative term, she defines it as whatever Israel or
Jews do.
What distinguished Peto's rehashing of the ravings of the Protocols of
the Elders of Zion as modernized by assorted Chomskys, Finkelsteins,
and Walt-Mearsheimers, was her dedication of the thesis to her dead
and defenseless grandmother, Jolan Peto: "If she were alive today, she
would be right there with me protesting against Israeli apartheid."
Like most dead people, Peto's grandmother is vulnerable to assaults on
her memory by an unscrupulous and ruthless grandchild. (Jewish
mothers, one notices, rarely receive these accolades from their
Israel-bashing daughters; often still alive, mothers constitute too
great a risk.)
But Jolan Peto has been redeemed by her grandson, a Houston physician
named David Peto. He published on December 16 an open letter to the
press in which he urged his sister to respect the dead and cease to
conscript their grandmother for her sordid vendetta against the Jews:
"It is not my desire to get involved with the details of my sister
Jenny Peto's thesis, which has recently generated tremendous
controversy. There are people far more qualified than I to debate the
merits of the thesis, or lack thereof. There is, however, one point
that I would like to contest. My sister dedicated her thesis to our
late grandmother, Jolan Peto. She asserted that if our grandmother
"were alive today, she would be right there with me protesting against
Israeli apartheid."
"Our grandmother was the youngest teacher at the Jewish orphanage in
Budapest during the Second World War. She, along with my grandfather,
saved countless children from death at the hands of the Nazis. After
the war, she saw firsthand the brutality and baseness of the communist
regime that came into power. She, along with our grandfather and
father, escaped to Canada, and celebrated the day of their arrival
each and every year. Freedom was not an abstract idea to her; it was
alive and tangible for her. Our grandmother was a soft-spoken woman,
but she had an iron will. She taught us to abhor hatred, and to strive
for excellence in everything we did. She was a woman of endless
patience and generosity, and boundless love. She was uncompromising in
her dedication to truth and honesty, and was also an ardent supporter
of the state of Israel.
"My sister is simply wrong; our grandmother would have been entirely
opposed to her anti-Israel protests. Our grandmother had a tremendous
impact on my life, and her memory continues to be a source of strength
and inspiration to my family. My daughter is named after her, and we
pray that she will emulate her namesake. I cannot in good conscience
allow my sister to misappropriate publicly our grandmother's memory to
suit her political ideology."
For this act of decency, Dr. Peto was pilloried by his sister as "a
right-wing fanatical, racist Zionist."
* * * * *
The other "useful idiot" (and cemetery desecrator) to whom Kay alluded
is one Judy Rebick. She is a practitioner of no known discipline at
all (not even the one prohibited by W. H. Auden's Eleventh
Commandment: "Thou shalt not commit sociology"). Rather, she is a
"chaired" professor (at Ryerson University in Toronto) of "Social
Justice," that prolific generator of ferocious do-gooders, people who
confuse doing good with feeling good about what they are doing. She is
the author of a number of feminist tracts and a book called
Politically Speaking (co-authored with one Kike Roach).
A year before Peto vaulted to worldwide infamy, Rebick came to the
defense of yet another prodigiously busy Canadian-Jewish
Israel-basher, Naomi Klein, by announcing in September 2009 that her
own grandmother, who had survived a pogrom, indeed (she implied)
because she had survived a pogrom, "would have been so proud of Naomi
Klein" for exhorting the Toronto Film Festival to shun the city of Tel
Aviv.
The line of succession among these anti-Zionist converters of their
deceased grandmothers may, however, be traced a bit farther back than
Kay's Canadians, to a public intellectual of far greater weight,
moment, literacy, and prominence than either Rebick or Peto: England's
Alain De Botton.
De Botton is the author of several "self-help" books with titles like
How Proust Can Change Your Life; and to his actual publishing record
has recently been added a fictional string of titles invented by
Howard Jacobson, author of The Finkler Question. This satirical novel
portrays the spiritual anemia of England's anti-Zionist "ashamed"
Jews, who are ashamed not of their own perfidy and cowardice but of
Israel's existence. The character who gives the novel its name, Samuel
Finkler, is a composite figure based in part on De Botton. Finkler has
written such bestsellers as The Socratic Flirt and The Existentialist
in the Kitchen. For declaring on the BBC that, "as a Jew," he is
"ashamed" of Israel, Finkler is promptly rewarded with an invitation
to join a group of "well-known theatrical and academic Jews" who offer
to rename themselves "Ashamed Jews."
Flattered by the attention of the third-rate actors, he accepts the
honor. The narrator adds, for no readily apparent reason, that Finkler
cares as little for the praise of his fellow academics as for "the
prayers he had never said for his grandfather." The pointed acerbity
of that remark about how Finkler cynically manipulates the memory of
his grandfather is puzzling unless we are aware that, in this roman a
clef, Finkler's exploitation of his grandfather may well be based upon
De Botton's exploitation of his grandmother in the Anglo-Jewish and
Israeli press.
We do not know whether De Botton - who is proud to call himself an
atheist - has been more attentive to the soul of his grandmother than
that of his grandfather, but, like his Canadian emulators, he has gone
to the trouble of disinterring and resurrecting her, as if to invoke
ancestral authority for his repudiation of his ancestors.
In a September 22, 2009 interview with the London Jewish Chronicle, De
Botton replied to a question about what Israel meant to him as
follows: "Israel is for me a country I will always associate with my
grandmother, Yolande Gabai, who played a central role in the founding
of the state through her activities in Egypt with the Jewish Agency, a
country whose current state she would deplore, for she knew that peace
with the Arabs was at the core of the challenge facing the new
country."
We are all too familiar with the smug, self-satisfied assurance of
these smelly little orthodoxies about "deplorable" Israel; they say,
in effect, the following: "Despite superficial evidence to the
contrary, such as the absence of peace since Israel's unilateral
withdrawal from Lebanon in favor of Hizbullah or from Gaza in favor of
Hamas, all of us thinking people who read The Independent, The
Guardian, The Observerand The New Statesman know that Israel is
responsible for the absence of peace with its neighbors because it has
not yet fully withdrawn from the disputed territories of Judea and
Samaria." (Which, lest it be forgotten, were entirely in the hands of
the Arabs, theirs to do with whatever they liked, from 1948-67, when
they decided to go to war against Israel.)
But this is not quite blatant and gross enough for De Botton: he must
also invoke the authority of his dead grandmother.
Yolande Gabai Harmor De Botton was indeed an important figure in the
Zionist movement. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, she spied for the Jewish
Agency during 1947-48, risking both her own life and that of her son
while posing as a Palestine Postjournalist, and earning the nickname
of "the Jewish Mata Hari." In July 1948 she was imprisoned in Egypt
and later deported. In 1948-49, she worked for the Middle East
Department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. She died in 1959, ten
years before her grandson Alain was born, and left behind precious
little evidence that she would have become a willing recruit to the
view of Anglo-Jewish leftists that if Israel has a raison d'etre at
all, it is, as De Botton suggested in an egregious interview with
Haaretzin October 2008, to "humiliate" Arabs and "kill" their olive
trees.
(Allegations of Israeli attacks on Arab olive trees flare up
frequently in the propaganda war conducted by Arabs and Arabophiles in
the west. Though never attaining the scale of such gigantic frauds as
the "Jeningrad" massacre or the killing of Mohammed al-Dura, they
never go away either. In October 2002, for example, as a distraction
from the news of the latest intifada savagery, bien-pensant Jewish
leftists shrieked about "the cruel and vindictive destruction of
venerable olive groves under the pretext that they were hiding places
for snipers." Alas, as Israel Radio reported, the terrorist who had
just murdered two little Jewish girls and a woman in Hermesh exploited
the olive trees to reconnoiter the area and then slip under the fence
to do his murderous work.)
De Botton seems to take the fact that his grandmother got along nicely
in Egyptian society (while concealing her work as a spy) and believed
the foundation of a Jewish state would benefit Arabs (toward whom she
felt kindly) as well as Jews shows that she would now, if resurrected,
be an avid conscript to his own trendy prejudices and the Palestinian
irredentist cause.
Ben-Gurion, of course, believed the very same thing that Grandma
Yolande did; but he has yet to be conscripted by the grave-robbers.
Moreover, it does not occur to De Botton that the Palestinians have
become one of the world's most ruined peoples not because Jews won't
"make peace" with them but because, encouraged by the Petos, Rebicks,
and De Bottons, they have devoted themselves not to the building up of
their own society but to the destruction of the society of their
neighbor.
In addition to being a writer (at times, as in The Pleasures and
Sorrows of Work,a very good one), De Botton is the founder of an
institution in central London called The School of Life. Repudiating
the Renaissance tradition of liberal (or "useless") education in favor
of what John Henry Newman called the servile (or "useful") kind, the
school offers courses in (to quote De Botton) "marriage,
child-rearing, choosing a career, changing the world and death."
The curriculum does not, however, appear to include a course in the
Fifth Commandment, and De Botton's violation of the injunction to
honor your father and mother (and, by extension, your grandfather and
grandmother) suggests that he - and Peto and Rebick and all the other
aspiring Jewish Mormons - would do well to make honest people of
themselves before setting out to convert the dead and change the
world.
Edward Alexander is professor emeritus of English Literature at the
University of Washington. He is the co-author, with Paul Bogdanor, of
"The Jewish Divide over Israel: Accusers and Defenders" (Transaction
Books).
2. Dersh on J Street's latest idiocy:
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/46949
3. Leftists going bonkers over transparency:
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/46950
4. The second Shoah?
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4019790,00.html
5. McCarthyists battling inciters:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141989
6. Leftist pseudo-rabbis attacking Glenn Beck:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4019919,00.html
7. Spilt milk: from the Wall St Journal:
REVIEW & OUTLOOKJANUARY 27, 2011.Land of Milk and Regulation
Preventing the next dairy farm oil slick..Article Comments (40) more
in Opinion ».
President Obama says he wants to purge regulations that are "just
plain dumb," like his humorous State of the Union bit about salmon. So
perhaps he should review a new rule that is supposed to prevent oil
spills akin to the Gulf Coast disaster—at the nation's dairy farms.
Two weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule
that subjects dairy producers to the Spill Prevention, Control and
Countermeasure program, which was created in 1970 to prevent oil
discharges in navigable waters or near shorelines. Naturally, it
usually applies to oil and natural gas outfits. But the EPA has
discovered that milk contains "a percentage of animal fat, which is a
non-petroleum oil," as the agency put it in the Federal Register.
In other words, the EPA thinks the next blowout may happen in rural
Vermont or Wisconsin. Other dangerous pollution risks that somehow
haven't made it onto the EPA docket include leaks from maple sugar
taps and the vapors at Badger State breweries.
The EPA rule requires farms—as well as places that make cheese,
butter, yogurt, ice cream and the like—to prepare and implement an
emergency management plan in the event of a milk catastrophe. Among
dozens of requirements, farmers must train first responders in cleanup
protocol and build "containment facilities" such as dikes or berms to
mitigate offshore dairy slicks.
These plans must be in place by November, and the U.S. Department of
Agriculture is even running a $3 million program "to help farmers and
ranchers comply with on-farm oil spill regulations." You cannot make
this stuff up.
The final rule is actually more lenient than the one the EPA
originally proposed. The agency tried to claim jurisdiction over the
design specifications of "milk containers and associated piping and
appurtenances," until the industry pointed out that such equipment was
already overseen by the Food and Drug Administration, the USDA and
state inspectors. The EPA conceded, "While these measures are not
specifically intended for oil spill prevention, we believe they may
prevent discharges of oil in quantities that are harmful."
We appreciate Mr. Obama's call for more regulatory reason, but it
would be more credible if one of his key agencies wasn't literally
crying over unspilled milk.
8. Leftist Academic Fifth Column:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Israeli%20extremism%20-%20Martin%20Sherman%20exposes%20Israels%20Academic%20Fifth%20Column.htm
In the 1960s there was a very popular rock song called "Little GTO"
I am not sure what a GTO was, but I think it was some sort of car.
The song was written by Ronny and the Daytonas, but popularized by the
Beach Boys and "Jan and Dean." For those of you not old enough to be
on social security, you may not recall the song. You can hear it
here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp2sSc3mgKI or here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_FSicQWimU
The original lyrics can be seen here:
http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/ronny_and_the_daytonas/gto.html
Well, upon hearing the song on an oldies internet radio station, it
occurred to me that a new version of this song must be immediately
composed and recorded in order to save Israel. So I am looking for
some singers, maybe Caroline Glick and her Latma people can record it.
So now, without further ado, we present to you the new lyrics to the song:
LITTLE NGO!
By Steve Plaut and the Monitors
Little NGO, we're really lookin' fine
Three colonels and two sergeants, sentenced four to nine,
Listen to us smearing, listen to us why-ee-eye-ine
Just never scrutinize our funding as we blow it up, NGO!
Wa-wa, (mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO") wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa
(mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO")
Wa-wa, (mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO") wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa
(mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO")
Wa-wa (mixed with "Ahhh, little NGO") wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa
You oughta see us selling that kocker Goldstone tales
Compare us with Goebbals, whose lying really pales,
We bash all the Yiddin, really drive 'em why-ee-eye-ild
Just never scrutinize our funding as we blow it up, NGO!
Wa-wa, (mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO") wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa
(mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO")
Wa-wa, (mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO") wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa
(mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO")
Wa-wa (mixed with "Ahhh, little NGO") wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa
Gonna hide all our money (We Hamas friends, flotillin' on) and buy a
NGO (We Hamas friends, flotillin' on)
Hit a Jew soldier with a crow bar (We Hamas friends, flotillin' on)
and we'll be ready to go (We Hamas friends, flotillin' on)
Take it out to Bil'In (We Hamas friends, flotillin' on) and help 'em
bomb (We Hamas friends, flotillin' on), yeah, yeah
Cause we're the coolest thing around,
Little buddy, no one's gonna shut our funding down!
When we turn it on, blow it up, treasonize, NGO
Wa-wa, (mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO") wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa
(mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO")
Wa-wa, (mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO") wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa
(mixed with "Yeah, yeah, little NGO")
Wa-wa (mixed with "Ahhh, little NGO") wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa
[Fade]
January 25, 2011
To: Mr. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Chairman of the Government of
the Russian Federation
From: Shimon Peres, hero of peace
Re: Those protests this week at the Moscow Airport by Activists and Militants
My heartfelt sympathies to you and the Russia people for the recent
Moscow airport unrest and protests against occupation that were held
this week. However, we must really speak about how to deal with these
forms of activism in Russia, perpetrated by these misunderstood
Chechen activists.
Mister Prime Minister, I have a great deal of experience in dealing
successfully with terrorism and violence, and this is why I wish to
come to your rescue. The first thing you must realize is that one can
only make peace with one's enemies. With one's friends, there is no
need to make peace. There is no military solution to the problems of
terrorism, and this is why you must seek a diplomatic solution. "No
Justice, No Peace?" as they say.
You must invite the leaders of this Chechen organization
responsible for the bloodshed in Moscow to meet with you in the
Kremlin and perhaps tour Petrograd palaces together. You must learn to
feel their pain and understand their needs. The solution is to create
two states for two peoples, one Slavic and one Islamic, inside Russia
itself with Moscow as the joint capital. You must bear in mind that
Russia was once conquered by the Tatars and that makes all of Russia
the homeland of Moslems.
You must meet all the demands of the militants who held the
airport protest in Moscow in full. You must offer them Internet web
services and five-star tourist hotels in exchange for their promising
to pursue peace. After all, that is how we turned Yasser Arafat into
a peace partner. You see, military force serves no role any more in
the post-modern universe. It is passe. It is archaic. Today,
consumer interests dominate the world, and the Islamist activists of
the earth will surely make peace in exchange for some profits from
participating in global trade.
The attacks on Moscow came because you have been insufficiently
sensitive to the needs of the Moslem Other. You took their rhetoric at
face value, whereas we in Israel know that all this rhetoric is empty
and in fact, these people truly want peace. Sure, they praise Hitler
and celebrate genocidal atrocities, but what is it that they REALLY
want? You must negotiate with them even while under attack.
Conditioning negotiations on an end to violence is a no-win situation.
It will simply extend the bloodshed! You must put your own house in
order, and eliminate inequality and injustice inside Russia, and then
the terrorists will no longer target you.
The key is to build a New Middle Eurasia, one in which everyone is
so busy with the important matters of developing tourism,
infrastructure investments and high-technology that they will have no
time to pursue violence. Moreover, if you strike at the perpetrators
of the Moscow airport protests and their supporters, you will simply
expand and enlarge the cycle of violence. Your retaliation bombs will
no doubt injure some innocent children and civilians alongside any
terrorist activists you strike. That will enrage the rest of the world
and make the victims seek revenge. Your violence against these
militants and activists will cause them to hate all Slavs and it will
drive the separatists to embrace terrorism. Moreover, if you refuse
to negotiate with the Moslem separatists, then their leaders will be
toppled and a violent extremist group will take charge. In that case,
you will have lost the window of opportunity to make peace.
Begin by declaring a unilateral ceasefire! Mister Prime Minister,
blessed is the peacemaker. Remember Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. The
entire world will support you and congratulate you if you respond to
these horrific attacks by disarming and opening serious dialogue with
the terror activists. All we are saying is give peace a chance.
Yitzhak Rabin would have approved. Yes, chaver, what you need is
shalom, salaam, peace. You will be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in
recognition. Do not allow yourself to be drawn down into the gutter
of retaliation. Violence never achieves anything. History has no
lessons. History is the dead past.
Follow my example! Provide the Chechen activists and militants
with anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles so that they can battle
against the true radicals and extremists. Moreover, they will do so
with no ACLU or Supreme Court to restrain them! Demonstrate your
humanity by paying pensions to any widows and orphans of the
terrorists who blew up the airport. Mister Prime Minister, my own
peace policies have eliminated war, bloodshed and terror from the
Middle East. We now have only peace partners. If you follow in my
footsteps, you can achieve the same lofty goals.
Peacefully yours,
Shimon Peres, Peacemaker-at-Large
finances of seditious leftist NGOs and other groups inside Israel:
Netanyahu has turned the rewrite of the proposed law over to an
open agent of the New Israel Fund. Since the New Israel Fund was
probably the main group that the law's initiators wanted investigated
in the first place, this is a bit like allowing Tony Soprano to
conduct his own RICO investigation of organized crime.
The rewrite of the law has been handed over to Isaac "Buji"
Herzog, a Labor Party stalwart and son of the late Israeli President
Haim Herzog. Like so many Israeli politicians, Herzog likes to be
known by an infantile nickname, in his case "Buji." Until a few days
ago he was the Labor Party Minister of Welfare in the coalition
government. He is now a member of one of the three factions left over
from the breakup of the Labor Party, after Ehud Barak and four others
quit its ranks. Public opinion polls are reporting Herzog as the most
popular of the leaders of the rump Labor Party, and he is generally
respected more than the other Labor lightweights. But he also has a
long track record of working with the New Israel Fund. Last year he
led the campaign to demonize critics of the New Israel Fund as
"McCarthyists." More troubling, he himself was up to his ears
involved in the recruitment of foreign tainted and illegal funds for
various front groups set up in 1999, which were involved in the Mugabe
style campaign finances of Ehud Barak at that time.
In charge of rewriting the proposed law, Herzog is coordinating
each and every letter and punctuation mark in his draft law with the
New Israel Fund. By the time he finishes, the only seditious leftist
groups whose finances the law will allow to be investigated will be
some mahjong clubs and yeshivas.
2. Well I suppose we should be happy whenever the Bible serves to
provide a matter of current events interest and public debate.
But this week the Bible is the background material to the further
Der-Sturmer-ization of Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper published in
Hebrew. Haaretz is becoming more and more openly hostile to Judaism
itself.
The front page story today is this:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/who-is-advocating-death-camps-for-israel-s-moderate-rabbis-1.338588
You have to read the piece to believe that it was actually
published and is not some sort of Purim gag by the Haaretz muftis.
There it says in black and white that a religious groups is demanding
the building of extermination camps for moderate rabbis and no doubt
also for Arabs.
Here is the Haaretz banner headline: "Who is advocating 'death
camps' for Israel's moderate rabbis? Editorial calling for death
camps for 'Amalekites' raises storm among religious."
So what on earth is Haaretz foaming at the mouth about? Where did
it come up with this nonsense?
The answer to the mystery is that the editors of Haaretz have
probably never been inside a synagogue or read the Torah.
Most Israeli synagogues have tables on which weekly leaflets
discussing the weekly Torah portion and sometimes other matters,
including current events, are distributed. My own synagogue probably
distributes 20 each week. They are part of the universal discourse
among Jews about the weekly Torah portion. The quality of the
leaflets varies from the highly scholarly and learned all the way down
to the primitive and superstitious. The leaflet that is suddenly so
controversial for the Haaretz Left is called Maayanei Ha-Yeshua, and I
put it in the upper half of the weekly leaflets in terms of interest
and quality. I read it myself regularly, although there are some
others I think are better.
Now unbeknownst to the Haaretz editors, because of their
animosity towards Judaism, is the little fact that the Torah portion
two weeks back contained the Biblical Commandment to exterminate the
Nation of Amalek. Here is not the place to expound about where the
commandment comes from and why it is there. But it is there in black
and white in the Torah. You are free not to like the Commandment,
although you will need to take your objections up with God and not
with me, and in any case there are no certifiable descendents of
Amalek that anyone is aware of in the real world.
Now being about the weekly Torah portion, the leaflet that was
smuggled into the hands of Haaretz editors naturally discussed the
Amalek extermination commandment, the week in which it is read from
the Torah. Haaretz of course would have been much happier had the
leaflet called for Israel's surrender to be negotiated with the Hamas,
but alas the leaflet discussed that week's Torah portion instead.
Since the leaflet was written by people who believe in the Torah, they
also spoke about the obligation to obliterate Amalek. Unbeknownst to
the same learned Haaretz staff, all of the Purim holiday, which is
celebrated even by children of Haaretz readers, is a celebration of
the annihilation of Amalek!! So wait until Adar Bet comes round this
year to see if Haaretz denounces Purim as a fascist Nazi racist event
that must be stopped.
Anyhow, the Haaretz sages read the leaflet in question, and saw
that it spoke about obliterating the memory of Amalek. They also
learned that the same leaflet criticized the critics of the Rabbis who
had issued the call not to rent property in Jewish neighborhoods to
Arabs. Putting two plus two together, and – as always at Haaretz –
getting 13 as the sum, Haaretz concluded that the leaflet's discussion
of eliminating Amalek was actually code for murdering moderate rabbis.
The Haaretz coverage goes on: "The leaflet's editors declined to
say who they meant by 'the Amalekites.'" That of course is because
any reader of the leaflet who found his way to synagogue services
already knows who and what Amalek is! Haaretz continues: "There are
no known descendants of the biblical Amalekites today, but the term is
sometimes used to describe anyone deemed an irreconcilable enemy of
the Jews." So in other words, if some people use the term Amalek
loosely and in allegorical manner as a term of derision, it must mean
that they are planning to carry out genocide. The Haaretz sleaze is
mimicking anti-Semitic smears of rabbis appearing in other forums.
See the second item down the page here:
http://isracampus.org.il/ALEF%20Watch.htm
The attack against Sarah Palin for her "target" sign on Arizona
pales in significance with this Haaretz idiocy. By the same logic,
calling someone an arrogant bastard must literally refer to the nature
of the relationship between that person's parents. Calling someone
spacey must mean they are seriously considered to have arrived on a
Chamish UFO!! We could go on and on.
So in order to demonize rabbis, Haaretz pretends to have lost the
ability to understand metaphor and hyperbole.
Add that to its inability to understand the Middle East conflict
and to its gutter anti-Judaism incitement.
3. Moronic but not quite Amalek:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/outside%20Israel%20-%20UCLA%20-%20Yael%20Korin%20-%20Proud%20to%20be%20Ashamed%20to%20be%20Jews.htm
and
For the past two weeks, the media and blogs from around the world
have been screaming that Israeli troops murdered a young Palestinian
woman "demonstrator" in the West Bank town of Bil'in. The town has
long been the scene of violent attacks by leftist "anarchist"
anarcho-fascists and the local Arabs against Israeli troops and police
guarding the Israeli security fence. Israel coddles the hooligans and
responds to their violence with smiles and tear gas. Several tenured
traitors have been arrested over the years when involved in the
violence there.
Anyway, the woman "demonstrator" in question was 34 year old
Jawaher Abu-Rahma. The lefties claimed she was shot down by Israeli
troops like a dog, riddled with bullets. Then they changed their
story. She died because she breathed poisonous doses of tear gas
fired at the "demonstrators" to disburse them.
Here is just one news story from leftist YNET about the
"atrocity": http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4007411,00.html
Well, heavens to Mergatroyd. The truth comes out today, buried in
the back pages of Haaretz and not mentioned at all in the Western
media. Seems that young Jawaher was taken to a PLO "hospital" in
Ramallah after breathing some tear gas, because having breathed tear
gas her eyes were tearing. It happens.
There she was given a massive shot of "Atropine" – I guess
something to reduce irritation of the eyes after tear gas. But she
was given at least eight times the right dose, which was a toxic
level, and she died from Atropine poisoning. See this:
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?ID=204376&R=R1 and
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/idf-death-of-bil-in-woman-caused-by-poor-medical-care-in-ramallah-1.337998
In other words, like Rachel Corrie, she was killed by incompetent
Palestinian medical personnel.
But don't hold your breath waiting for any leftists to apologize.
be my usual Plautian posting.
Today, Jan. 19, 2011, is exactly the thirtieth anniversary of the
day of my becoming an Israeli.
I thought you might enjoy the telling of that tale.
I flew out of New York in an ice storm on Jan. 18, 1981, and
arrived in Lod airport the following afternoon, local time. I had
come to the "Jewish Agency" offices in Cleveland two months earlier to
get set up. I entered the office of the "shaliach" or emissary for
those making aliyah. "I am moving to Israel in two months," I
announce. "No, you can't," he explains, "There is just not enough
time to get set up." "There is nothing to set up," I answer. "But we
cannot get you into an 'Absorption Center' in so little time," he
says. "That is ok, I do not want to go to any Absorption Center," I
say. "Well, ok, but we cannot get you into a Hebrew language ulpan in
so little time," he says." "That is ok," I say, "I already speak
Hebrew fluently." "Well, ok, but we cannot help you find a job in so
little time," he says." "That is ok, I already have a job there," say
I. "But we do not have time to help you find an apartment in which
to live," he says. "That is ok, I will go rent my own apartment, just
as I do here in Ohio, thank you very much," I say. "Well, in that
case, if everything is taken care of, what are you doing here?" he
asks. "I just need a form from you so I can buy a one-way El Al
ticket," I say. Thus endeth my "absorption" preparation.
Anyhow, I arrive at Lod airport on Jan. 19, the only immigrant on
my flight, during a month that held a record for the low number of
people immigrating to Israel. The local Ministry of Absorption
offices in the airport send someone to the gate to conduct me to their
"absorption" offices, meaning the place where I get an ID card. I am
also offered tea and stale bread and margarine. My suitcases were
left worryingly back next to the luggage belt.
"Ok," say I, "I am ready to head for Haifa." "No, not yet, we
cannot send off a driver and a taxi to take you to Haifa until we have
some additional immigrants to share the ride, so you have to wait for
the next flight to come in." "I would rather pay for the taxi myself
and get going," say I. "No, you cannot, it is against regulations."
So we wait for two more flights to arrive, on which there are no
immigrants at all. Finally I announce I am jet lagged and do not feel
good so I am leaving.
At that point they call out the Ministry of Immigration driver,
himself a relatively new immigrant from Soviet Georgia. "Where to,"
he asks. "To Haifa," say I. "Haifa, where is Haifa? How do we get
there?" the driver asks the fellow who just got off the plane. "I
will show you," say I.
And off we go to Haifa. As we get close, he asks where I need
inside the city. The Zion Hotel, say I, having reserved a $30 per
night dive back in the era many years before the internet. "How do we
get there," asks the old-veteran of a driver. "Beats me," says the
new arrival, "Can you ask those people standing on the sidewalk where
the hotel is?" "I can't," says the driver, "My Hebrew is not good
enough. But you speak Hebrew fine so you should go over and ask
them." (I later hear horror stories of new immigrants from Canada
who drove around Beer Sheba for 3 hours aimlessly cause their Ministry
of Absorption driver spoke no Hebrew.)
Eventually we find the hotel, which today has been converted into
an office building for municipal welfare services. I know that,
because I went back to visit it today. After I check in, I ask if I
can get something to eat. I get more tea, stale bread and margarine.
But the TV is on in the dining room, showing the news on the one
single Israeli TV channel that operates, which broadcasts only in
black and white so that Israelis will not spend money on color TV
sets. I sit back and watch. The Begin government that very evening
has announced the appointment of a new Minister of Finance, Yoram
Aridor. And Aridor is being interviewed about what his new policies
will be. He plans to expand money printing while freezing the
exchange rate and flooding Israel with new cheap imported consumer
goods to buy off the public that is sick of the rising inflation. I
run to the front desk. "Call my taxi back," I say after watching
Aridor, "I want him to take me back to the airport!" "Sorry, he has
gone," says the clerk.
And now, thirty years later, still in Haifa, the rest is history!
"University" - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141800
Parents: We Won't Send Our Children to Ben Gurion U
by Gil Ronen
Follow Israel news on and .
A public letter sent by parents of a student at Ben Gurion University
is making the rounds on the Internet and causing a stir.
The letter was written by Dina and Boaz Dromi of Alonei Abba, a
secular agricultural community in the lower Galilee, and addressed to
Rivka Carmi, President of Ben Gurion University.
Shalom and blessings!
We wanted to tell you that we live in northern Israel, in a quiet,
beautiful community, Alonei Abba in the Yizre'el Valley. We earn a
respectable living by the toil of our hands and we have four daughters
aged 17 to 31. The first three daughters served in the IDF and the
fourth will follow in their footsteps once she completes her school
studies.
The first two are college graduates and the third began her studies
this year at Ben Gurion University. We have two sons-in-law who serve
in the reserves, a tiny grandson and another one on the way. We are a
secular family that typifies much of the Israeli Jewish public.
Over the years, we accompanied many students who studied at your
institution and the image we got was a positive one, in most cases. "A
good university, very social-minded and community-minded" - that was
the description we heard, and we liked to repeat it in the ears of
parents and students who were unsure where to study.
The first crack in this image began to form when we heard that a
lecturer of yours, Dr. Neve Gordon, who receives his salary from the
Israeli taxpayer, called for an academic boycott against Israel's
academe. Sure, his "freedom of expression" allows him to defame and
boycott, but doesn't decency - his and yours - dictate that he cease
to be represented within an institute he wants boycotted?
This crack became a large fissure when this lecturer, together with MK
Taleb A-Sanaa, called IDF soldiers "murderers"!
Your students - our sons, our husbands - the ones who give you your
strength; the ones without whom no academic institution would exist
here, certainly not under an Israeli flag - are they murderers in your
eyes? Are you capable of entering a study hall in your university,
looking the students in their eyes and saying - 'yes, you reservist
soldiers are murderers'?
The truth is that your silence on this matter appears to answer that
question, and to confirm our suspicion, that Ben Gurion University
under your leadership has, in fact, left the challenging trek of
Zionism and - what is worse - turned against it.
Taking all this into consideration, it did not surprise us when we
learned of the two-day seminar you have been organizing at Ben Gurion
University. The seminar is centered around your support for the
Bedouin sector in the Negev and in advising Bedouins on how to take
over state land. Your famous pluralism was conveniently forgotten when
you decided not to allow the participation of an attorney from the
state, who wanted to take part in the event and make the state's
position known to the participants.
Boycotts, incitement, subversion against the state's foundations,
silencing of students who are afraid to say their opinions when
lecturers and their assistants are within earshot. That, you call
pluralism!
We, too, will make use of our right to freedom of speech. We will send
this letter to the Minister of Education and to the Chairman of the
Knesset's Education Committee, we will send this letter out in mass
circulation and we will declare that we will not send our children to
an academic institute that silences Zionist mouths, incites against
the IDF, drips poison and preaches destruction.
In the name of honesty, and because our money are tainted - in your
opinion - with the blood of innocents, it is only just that you should
receive your salaries from pure and innocent hands: the European
Union, for instance, or the Turkish government, or maybe even the
president of Iran.
Think about it!
Dina and Boaz Dromi
Alonei Aba
The Grassroots Zionist student movement has been trying to draw the
attention of the public - as well as philanthropic donors - to Ben
Gurion University's reputation as a hotbed of ultra-leftist sedition.
(see also this: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141665 )
2. A while back I was sitting on a Haifa bench with three other
fellows when I accidentally kicked over this ancient bottle under the
bench and out came a real genie. You each get one wish that will come
true, the genie announces to us. Ok, says the first fellow, I wish
that the semi-Marxist Meretz Party should drop to three Knesset seats
as its parliamentary representation. The second fellow makes a wish
that the Knesset should vote to investigate the finances of Israel's
radical leftist NGO's and other seditious organizations. The third
fellow makes a wish that the Israeli Labor Party should split into
multiple splinters so small that none are likely to be able to get
enough votes to enter the Knesset. After listening to those other
three fellows make their wishes, I asked the genie if it were true
that each of those three wishes would come true. The genie confirmed
and asked me now what I wanted to wish for. In that case, I
responded, I think I will have a Diet Cola.
It is a time of ecstasy, and I do NOT mean those little pills that
Tikkun readers swallow!
Yes, the last of those special wishes is coming true as we speak.
The Israeli Labor Party is about to be swept, deservingly so, into the
dustbin of Jewish history. Ehud Barak himself decided to strike a
"dirty deal" with Netanyahu and demolish his own party. He was driven
to do so by a revolt by most of the other senior Labor Bolsheviks,
each of whom was supporting the toppling of Barak and his replacement
by each of them! The upstarts include Braverman, Mitzna, Herzog,
Peretz, Sheli Yachimovich and Ben-Eliezer (Fuad). A sorrier batch of
losers would be hard to find. The upstarts are also in
perma-conflict with one another, meaning it is likely that they will
be unable to form a single new replacement party, and may even end up
running their own one-person mini-parties each. Even if they manage
to coalesce into two or three lumps, it is possible that none will be
able to attract enough votes to get into the next Knesset. Barak's
rump party, now named Atzmaut, is highly unlikely to get into the
Knesset in any new election. How wonderful it would be if the best
that any "Revised Labor Party" could do would be to field a slate
headed by the semi-literate Amir Peretz and the yawn-inducing
pseudo-"academic" Avishai Braverman.
Barak took with him Matan Vilnay and three Labor backbenchers,
whose names I would be surprised if you know. They are now their own
Knesset faction and are remaining in the Netanyahu coalition, being
awarded by Bib with cabinet slots and other perqs as compensation for
demolishing Labor.
The Israeli Left is so hysterical that it cannot control its
bodily functions. In its usual unison, the leftist choir is bleating
about this horrible dirty trick and betrayal by Barak! Yes, the same
Barak who obeyed his leftist mentors and carried outthe unilateral
Israeli capitulation to the Hezb'Allah in southern Lebanon in 2000!
And let us bear in mind that these are PRECISELY the same
leftists that were ecstatic when Shimon Peres struck a very similar
"dirty deal" with the religious SHAS party aimed at undermining the
Labor-Likud in 1990! (See this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dirty_trick_(Israel) ).
Lavatories in the offices of the Labor party's factions are
flooding! Everything is up in the air? Who gets Labor Party assets
and funds? Who pays Labor's debts?
And the coolest part of this "dirty trick" was the resignation of
Daniel Ben-Simon! He was an above-average in intelligence Labor
Party back-bencher moving ever further to the Left. But he seems to
have been part of Barak's master plan, whether willingly or not (there
seems to be disagreement here about that). Due to a technicality,
Barak was prohibited from breaking from Labor and setting up his own
Knesset faction and thus staying in the Netanyahu coalition UNLESS HE
COULD COMMAND A THIRD OF EXISTING LABOR KNESSET SEATS. But Barak
commanded only 4 and Labor had 13. Then a few days ago Ben-Simon
resigned from Labor, leaving the party with 12 seats. And suddenly
Barak has his magical third and can constitutionally break out of
Labor with his 4 Knesset buddies. Leaving the rest of Labor to mop up
the mess in the lavatory!
Hell, I am willing to share my Cola with Ben-Simon after that!
Now, if the anti-democratic leftist Ben Gurion University David
Newman is soiling himself in anguish over the collapse of Labor
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=204052 ,
something really glorious must have happened!
And if fruitcake Avrum Burg is sobbing,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4015139,00.html , it must be
one of the happiest days in Jewish history.
Where's my Diet Cola!
for partisan purposes. He is bellowing his indignation that the
Knesset voted to investigate the funding of Israeli leftist
organizations. You can read his ranting here:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/peres-to-haaretz-probe-of-leftist-ngos-harms-israeli-democracy-1.337407
Note the headline: Haaretz claims that "Probes of Leftist NGO's hurt
Israeli democracy." That is almost correct. You just need to erase
the word "probes" from the sentence. That leaves: "Leftist NGO's hurt
Israeli democracy." That is the correct statement.
Peres in his Haaretz interview proposes that the entire investigation
be left to the law-enforcement authorities. But that disingenuous
proposal intentionally obfuscates the real point. No one is claiming
that the NGO's accepting money from foreign hostile forces is in
violation of the law, because THERE IS NO ISRAELI LAW AGAINST IT!
(There is also no Israeli law to speak of against treason!) So any
criminal investigation of the leftist NGO's will inevitably discover
that no law has been broken. But the real issue is political: that
the funding sources reveal the true political agenda of the leftist
NGO's and that is something that members of the Israeli electorate and
public have the right to know! And that is what Peres wants to hide.
There is however an even more important point. Shimon Peres' own
private NGO, the Peres Center, is entirely financed by foreign (EU)
funding! So golly gee, what a surprise that Peres himself is
misusing his Presidential bully pulpit to denounce demands that
foreign funding of Israeli NGO's be exposed!
One last point. In my earlier posting, I mentioned how the Israeli
caring Left is suddenly demanding that the wives of Israeli Rabbis who
call upon Jewish young woman NOT to date Arabs should be indicted for
"racism." That is "racism," you see. Well, guess what happens to
Arab women who date Jewish men in Israel! I will not get too lurid
and spell it out for you. But those "honor killings" and torture by
family members of course are NOT racism, insist the leftist Care
Bears.
By Steven Plaut
You will be excused if you have not been following the debate over
proposals to demand that sources of funding for political parties and
activist groups be revealed.
In Ireland.
Curiously, it is the Sinn Fein Party that is demanding that reform.
[See http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/19893# .] Actually, this is not
so unusual. Lots of democracies require disclosure of financial
support from outside the country for political groups operating
therein. Aside from Israel, I doubt any country at all has allowed
funding from abroad for seditious groups supporting the enemies of
their country in time of war.
What a difference between the debate in Ireland and the savage
bloodcurdling hysterical blitz by the Israeli Left (now even being led
by President Shimon Peres) against the proposals to investigate and
expose funding for anti-Israel activist groups operating inside
Israel.
The Israeli Left is putting war paint on and taking to the streets and
to the newspapers. Over the weekend a demonstration by leftists
against the proposal was held in Tel Aviv, complete with PLO flags and
anti-Israel slogans. Haaretz and Yediot say there were thousands who
participated in it, which I guess means that there were hundreds who
participated in it. The demonstration was sponsored in part by the
Israeli communist party, so you can see how devoted the demonstrators
are to freedom and democracy and pluralism. The Israeli leftist media
have gone bonkers and are now self-recruiting to battle the measure en
masse and in near-unison. The left wing of the Likud, led by Meretz
wannabe Dan Meridor, has also come out OPPOSED to the investigation.
And even Netanyahu has been cowed into changing the proposal. Now
instead of investigating the funding of leftist seditious groups
operating in Israel, the government will investigate funding for
groups of both the Left and the Right.
Now there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the demand that groups
from the Right also be subject to a bit of financial transparency and
accountability. But the symmetry conceded by Netanyahu is outrageous
and out of place. The groups of the "Right" operating in Israel are
not actively attempting to achieve Israel's annihilation. They have
their own platforms, with which you are free to disagree or agree.
But the far Leftist groups are seditious groups seeking to harm
Israel. They persecute innocent Israeli army officers, collaborate
with terrorist groups and with the enemies of Israel (like the
flotilla terrorists), support the worldwide boycotts against Israel,
collaborate with anti-Israel figures like Goldstone, endorse forms of
treason like the Palestinian "right of return," promote refusal by
soldiers to serve in the Israeli military. And of course lie through
their latte-stained teeth.
The Left and its amen chorus outside of Israel are trying to
misrepresent the proposal as an assault against nice caring "human
rights" groups in Israel because Israel fears having its "war crimes"
revealed. The reality is that these are anti-Israel and in some cases
anti-Semitic propaganda groups supporting the enemies of Israel in
times of war. They refuse to acknowledge that Jews are entitled to
any human rights at all, certainly not the human right to walk down
the street or sip coffee in a café without being murdered. They have
never ever heard of a Palestinian terrorist atrocity they wish to
denounce.
And to make matters so much worse, many of these same far Leftists are
whining that the proposal to require transparency in their finances is
undemocratic and contrary to freedom of speech. But these are the
very first people to demand that non-Leftists be stripped of THEIR
rights to freedom of expression! These are the far Leftists who
insist that every single denunciation of leftwing sedition is in fact
"McCarthyism." These same whiners about "McCarthyism" led the
massive McCarthyist campaign against freedom of speech for
non-leftists after the Rabin assassination. These are the people who
regard the expression of any opinion with which the Israeli communist
party might disagree to be "racist" and "incitement."
These are the people who demand that Rabbis who suggest that people
not rent property to Arabs in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods be
indicted as racists. And at the same time these are the very same
people marching and signing petitions demanding that no property be
rented or sold to Jews in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood at the
foothills of the Hebrew University or in the "City of David"
neighborhood of Jerusalem. These McCarthyist racists insist that Jews
do not belong in those neighborhoods. Never mind that the "City of
David" was made a Jewish town by King David himself. They also see
nothing bigoted about demanding that Orthodox Jews be prevented from
moving into predominantly secularist neighborhoods where the observant
"do not belong."
Not a single leftwing whiner has spoken out against the Israeli
leftist Prosecutor's harassment and interrogation of Rabbis. Not a
single one has spoken up on behalf of the right of settlers and
"Right-wingers" to express THEIR opinions. Not a single one has
denounced the criminalization of the Kahanists and the suppression of
THEIR right to express their opinions. Not a single one has spoken
out against the selective misuse of Israel's idiotic "anti-racism" law
to harass non-leftists, while there has yet to be a single case in
which that law was used to indict anti-Jewish Arabs or leftists.
Arabs and leftists in Israel may cheer and justify mass terrorist
attacks against Jews. Leftwing professors at Ben Gurion University
may chant (as they recently did) in Arabic: "In spirit and in blood we
will redeem thee, Palestine" and "A Thousand blessings to the shaheed
suicide bombers." But wives of Israeli Rabbis suggesting that Jewish
girls not date Arab men may soon be facing criminal indictment for
"racism."
2. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141784
Job Offer: Subversive
Shevat 12, 5771, 17 January 11 05:40
by Gil Ronen
(Israelnationalnews.com) "'Human Rights' organizations are searching
for subversives and defamers of soldiers," a new provocative poster by
grassroots Zionist group Im Tirtzu proclaims. (Seen here:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/static/blogs/20110117053036.jpg )
"A global delegitimization campaign requires Israeli employees," says
the poster (at right), which graphically emulates the type of
work-wanted ad that is commonly found on tree trunks in Israeli
cities. "Preference will be given to conscientious objectors,
draft-dodgers and "luminaries" who specialize in hypocrisy,
superciliousness and libel."
The basic salary on offer is no less than $9,000 per month. "The job
includes: promotion of an international boycott of Israel, persecution
of IDF officers and the passing of false information to international
committees."
"For details contact our office in Ramallah or the Al-Aqsa Fund. Dial
*SUBVERSION and secure European citizenship and a company car."
The tongue-in-cheek "job offer" is a reference to the all-too-serious
allegations against Israeli leftist groups like B'Tselem and many
others, which Im Tirtzu alleges receive money from European countries
through a Ramallah-based fund with clear terror connections. The money
funneled through the fund has strings attached, Im Tirtzu says, and
Israeli-based groups that take the money are obliged to use it to
fight Israel.
Agassi. He agreed to auction off a photo of his wife naked in order
to raise money for charity, as a way to help victims of a typhoon in
Asia. His wife is named Steffi, by the way, but no relation to me.
See this: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7851643-photos-andre-agassi-shows-nude-photo-of-wife-steffi-for-charity
Now I must say that I found this idea very intriguing. I even
asked my Missus what she would think about us pursuing a similar idea.
To my amazement, she said that she would really be into the idea!
So as a gesture to raise money for charity, my wife has now
prepared a photo of me, wearing nothing at all but my Tallis!
Together we are making the following special offer. For anyone who
agrees to make a significant contribution to Isracampus – in exchange,
we agree NOT to send you that photo!
Tucson a few days back, had been a Moslem, even a Moslem psychiatrist
- like the shooter at Fort Hood.
Would not Paul Krugman and the rest of the American leftist oligarchs
be demanding that we all understand and feel the killer's pain?
Would not Michael Lerner select Loughner as the Tikkun Progressive of the Year?
Would not the NY Times be telling us that this is comeuppance for
American anti-Moslem insensitivity?
Would not Counterpunch claim that it was all a Zionist plot to make
Moslems look like terrorists?
Quote from Charles Krauthammer: (Media Blame Game) "The origins of
Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins
of Krugman's?"
One more afterthought: In recent days in Israel the Caring Left has
been up in arms because a concert hall was planning to hold an event
for some ultra-Orthodox people in which the men and women would be
seated separately in different halves of the hall. Fascist barbarism,
scream the caring ones. Of those, not a single one spoke out against
the decision by the Haifa municipality to appease the Palestinian
"National Orchestra" and to bar soldiers in uniform from entering the
Haifa concert hall.
(I thought this was kind of strange:
http://nation.foxnews.com/tuscon/2011/01/13/limbaughs-straight-shooter-tucson-billboard-removed
)
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141728
Published: 01/13/11, 9:10 PM / Last Update: 01/13/11, 9:06 PM
Arab Symphony Boots IDF Soldiers in Haifa
by Gil Ronen
A new Palestinian Authority "National Orchestra" performed in Haifa
last week and had IDF soldiers kicked out of the hall because they
wore uniforms.
The 40-musician orchestra has held a premier series of performances in
recent weeks. Their first-ever (and possibly last-ever?) performance
in Haifa was held at the Krieger Center for Performing Arts, which is
run by the Haifa municipality.
A team from IDF Radio was on hand to record the event and interview
the musicians. However, the musicians refused to answer the IDF Radio
reporter's questions because the interviewer was wearing a uniform.
The organizers then informed the IDF Radio team that they would not be
allowed to sit in the hall during the concert, again because of the
uniforms they were wearing. The reporters were told to leave, and did
so.
The Haifa Municipality's spokesman, Tzachi Terano, said the orchestra
had behaved in an "unbecoming" manner. "We strongly denounce any
boycott based on nationality, descent, clothing or anything else. This
is out of place, especially in Haifa, and people who rule out others
in this way will wind up bringing the same thing upon themselves. From
now on, the Haifa Municipality will think very hard about any future
requests by the boycotters to perform in the city."
IDF Radio ("Galei Tzahal") employs soldiers as well as civilians, and
broadcasts music, news and commentary to the general public. It is
considered very leftist, and some nationalists have said it should be
shut down, or limited to broadcasts specifically meant for soldiers.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)
2. The latest recruit to Ben Gurion University:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Tali%20Latowicki%20-%20another%20pseudo%20academic%20at%20BGU.htm
3. Open this photo:
http://isracampus.org.il/Extra%20Files/BGU%20-%20Neve%20Gordon%20-%20war%20criminals%20to%20trial.jpg
What you see is a demonstration in support of the Gaza Flotilla
terrorists at Ben Gurion University with Neve Gordon standing on the
far Left (where else?). At the protest there were signs and chants in
Arabic "In spirit and in blood we will redeem you." That is right,
in blood. This was an open endorsement of terrorist violence against
Jews. Ben Gurion University - Neve Gordon (Dept of Political Science)
with poster in Hebrew and Arabic denouncing Israeli leaders as "war
criminals"; Standing next to sign in Arabic calling for Terrorist
Violence "In Spirit and in Blood"
4. And more scholarship from Tel Aviv University:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Carlo%20Strenger%20-%20compares%20Israel%20with%20Nazi%20Germany.htm
Tel Aviv University - Carlo Strenger (Dept of Psychology) compares
Israel with Nazi Germany
5. The "BDS" Nazis: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4013059,00.html
the anti-democratic campaigns of leftists. He is heading the group of
"intellectuals" demanding boycotts of Ariel University. He also is
leading assorted campaigns to boycott "settlers" and to prevent
investigation of the funding sources of anti-Israel organizations
(http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3980731,00.html ). So it
is not much of a surprise that the very same week that Kaniuk is
battling against freedom of speech and against democracy in Israel,
Tel Aviv University has announced that it will be awarding Kaniuk a
special university "honorary doctorate."
2. Speaking of hostility to freedom of speech at Tel Aviv University,
the death of Ze'v Segal is as good an opportunity as any to retell
this tale of horror.
Ze'ev Segal, who died yesterday, was a Professor at Tel Aviv
University in their Public Policy department. A legalist by training,
he was better known as the legal correspondent for Haaretz. For
decades he was the Haaretz voice on matters of law. As such, he never
once denounced the campaign of leftist McCarthyism to persecute and
indict Rabbis and other "Rightists" after the assassination of Rabin.
He never spoke up against suppression of freedom of speech of
non-leftists. He did not condemn extremists at Tel Aviv University,
including when they attempted to censor the law school and prevent an
Israeli woman army colonel from teaching there.
About 16 years ago, Segal organized a panel discussion at Tel Aviv
University on affirmative action quotas. The Supreme Court in Israel
had just issued a writ, one of its very stupidest decisions in its
entire history, ordering public companies to appoint women directors
by quota, irregardless of whether the woman appointed had any
qualifications in business. The Left in Israel was ecstatic at this
"victory." I wrote a series of articles attacking the decision and
attacking affirmative action programs of all sorts. Segal called me
up and invited me to participate in the panel he was organizing.
Attendance at the panel was mandatory for students in the department.
When I arrived, I saw there is no place for me on the platform.
Instead there were five people on the stage, who then spent 2 and a
quarter hours presenting the PRO side of affirmative action, singing
its praises, in a one-sided indoctrination. The five included
feminists, radical leftists. Not a single comment about anything
harmful or evil about quotas, double standards, dumbing down,
injustice from reverse discrimination, harm from hiring incompetents.
Nothing.
After two and a quarter hours of nonstop one-sided
indoctrination, Segal points to me in the audience and invites me to
the platform, announcing that I have three minutes to present the
other side, the reasons why affirmative action programs are harmful.
As I went to the mike, two feminists in the audience started
screaming, "Don't allow him to speak." I took the mike and announce
that the rules of the debate, with two and a quarter hours for one
side and three minutes for the other, did not appeal to me and so I
was relinquishing my three minutes. I then walked out of the hall,
with several students running out after me to shake my hand.
This was 16 years ago, before Tel Aviv University sunk even
further into the cesspool of one-sided leftwing indoctrination.
Aharon Barak, the past Chief Justice of Israel and Israel's worst
promoter of "judicial activism," is cited in Haaretz today saying that
he and Segal shared legal ideas. I cannot think of a worst
condemnation.
3. Rivka Carmi, the cabbagehead president of Ben Gurion University,
is suddenly concerned that her schools rep for being a camp for
pseudo-academic indoctrination in treason, is starting to hurt:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4012495,00.html
blurb:
In the past year, Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba suffered a series
of public statements by staff members which gave it an image of an
institution identified with radical ends of the political spectrum.
One of the most controversial affairs concerns Prof. Neve Gordon from
the Political Science Department. Gordon had published an article at
the LA Times calling for a boycott of Israel which he described as an
"apartheid state."
The new protocol states that "In voicing their political or religious
opinions, unlike particular professional views, staff members should
refrain from using the Ben-Gurion University's name." The lecturers
were asked to clarify they were speaking for themselves and not
representing the university's positions.
4. Speaking up for Avigdor:
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=203159
5. Spain not bankrupt enough:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141680
6. BGU Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities David Newman continues
his campaign against freedom of speech for critics of the Left. See
his latest McCarthyist drivel here and especially read the talkbacks:
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=203010
Here is one of the best responses to Israel's anti-democratic Left:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4012203,00.html
Spare us your criticism
Op-ed: Radical Left's automatic condemnation of IDF is cheap
substitute for honest criticism
Yoaz Hendel
It's nice and warm up there, on the mountain peaks of fake morality.
One can look at the world from afar and blur reality in line with his
ideology. It's pleasant to think that everything depends on us alone
and that the neighbors around us are so sane and honest.
If only we listen to the radical Left, the vision of our prophets
shall come closer to being realized. Hence, this "moral elation"
naturally prompts an effort to seek where we went wrong. And so, with
no connection to current events, fatalities and threats, far Left
groups mark the IDF as the ultimate guilty party.
Forget about different versions, and explanations, and apologies –
without the occupation and the uniforms, the roadblocks and the
arrests, everything would have been resolved a long time ago. In a
democratic state criticism is an important thing, yet the radical
Left's automatic condemnation of everything the IDF represents or
claims is demagoguery and a cheap substitute for honest criticism.
War is a dirty business, regardless of which side you look at it from;
human folly that prompts hundreds of small tragedies and the loss of
life. Humanity has yet to come up with a patent that resolves all
conflicts via good will alone, and if someone is working on it in
Switzerland, a few generations will likely pass before the solution
gets here.
World's most moral army
The IDF must fight because "good neighbors" filled with good will are
still nurturing their dream to harm Israel. Regrettably, wars are not
what they used to be. There is no longer a front that is detached from
the home front, but rather, a deliberate mixture of civilians and
terrorists. For terror groups, civilians are the enemies just like
they are the best line of defense. The implication of this is
complexity and operational dilemmas that present the risk of hurting
human beings. This is reality and there is no other.
As opposed to other armies, the IDF educates every soldier from his
first day in the military on the values of purity of arms and
safeguarding civilian lives, even if they belong to the enemy's camp.
The IDF does it not because of the next Goldstone Report, but rather,
because this is the Jewish army's moral code.
There is no perfect army, and Israeli soldiers are no angels. Mistakes
have happened and will happen – this is the nature of war. The IDF is
the world's most moral army because this is the target it works
towards achieving; the ideal. And when leftist groups make their
charges, we must remember that what we have here is not a
trigger-happy army, but rather, people who too happily fire off their
words.
– discovers the blood libel:
The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel
Those who purport to care about the tenor of political discourse don't
help civil debate when they seize on any pretext to call their
political opponents accomplices to murder.
By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS
Shortly after November's electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster
Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews's TV show and remarked that what
President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was
another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to
Saturday's tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the
press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner's killing
spree might fill the bill.
With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and
reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the
tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why?
Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's
words, a "climate of hate."
Pima County, AZ Sheriff Clarence Dupnik held a press conference during
which he blamed vitriolic political rhetoric for provoking the
mentally unstable, and lamented Arizona's becoming the "mecca of
prejudice and bigotry." Video courtesy of AFP.
The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant.
Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—"lock and load"—and talked
about "targeting" opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in
The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics. Palin critic
Markos Moulitsas, on his Daily Kos blog, had even included Rep.
Gabrielle Giffords's district on a list of congressional districts
"bullseyed" for primary challenges. When Democrats use language like
this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama's famous remark, in
Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, "If they bring a knife to the
fight, we bring a gun"—it's just evidence of high spirits, apparently.
But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.
There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive
from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and
the tea party movement are more the targets than the source.
Jared Lee Loughner, the man suspected of a shooting spree that killed
a Federal Judge and critically wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle
Giffords, had left a trail of online videos in which he railed against
the government. WSJ's Neil Hickey reports.
American journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they
want to be. As the Washington Examiner's Byron York pointed out on
Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting
"Allahu Akhbar!" the press was full of cautions about not drawing
premature conclusions about a connection to Islamist terrorism.
"Where," asked Mr. York, "was that caution after the shootings in
Arizona?"
Set aside as inconvenient, apparently. There was no waiting for the
facts on Saturday. Likewise, last May New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
and CBS anchor Katie Couric speculated, without any evidence, that the
Times Square bomber might be a tea partier upset with the ObamaCare
bill.
So as the usual talking heads begin their "have you no decency?"
routine aimed at talk radio and Republican politicians, perhaps we
should turn the question around. Where is the decency in blood libel?
To paraphrase Justice Cardozo ("proof of negligence in the air, so to
speak, will not do"), there is no such thing as responsibility in the
air. Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures
with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on
"rhetoric" and a "climate of hate" to obscure their own dishonesty in
trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty
remains.
To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of
Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a)
asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which
based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b)
you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to
score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?
I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a
historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of
ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who
purport to care about the health of our political community
demonstrate precious little actual concern for America's political
well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call
their political opponents accomplices to murder.
Where is the decency in that?
Mr. Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee. He
hosts "InstaVision" on PJTV.
Israeli anti-democratic leftists joining the chorus:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4011638,00.html
The writer, Orly Azoulay, is the wife of Tel Aviv University extremist
anti-Israel professor Adi Ophir. Azoulay attempted to build an
academic career out of producing anti-Israel propaganda collections of
photographs. See this piece on the defaming duo:
http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Alon%20Ben%20Shaul%20-%20Adi%20Ophir%20and%20Ariella%20Azoulay%20-%20The%20Defaming%20Duo.htm
"Just like before the Rabin murder, the writing was on the wall before
the Arizona massacre as well. Nobody spoke about the gun explicitly
and nobody called for squeezing the trigger, yet the music on the
political scene played like an invitation to murder."
By the way, the following is a quote from a NY Times story concerning
Giffords and it is not a spoof: ""When I volunteered at her
campaign," Ms. Shenkarow continued, "there were people from all
denominations, including a guy dressed in drag." Rabbi Stephanie
Aaron, the leader of Congregation Chaverim, has been Ms. Giffords's
friend and spiritual adviser.
2. http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-4011914,00.html
Report: How Arab money is transferred to Israeli Left
After Knesset approves establishment of inquiry commission into
activity of leftist groups in Israel, Im Tirtzu report reveals money
trail, which it says begins in Arab countries and ends with
pro-Palestinian activity in the Jewish state. B'Tselem: Claims
unfounded
Roni Sofer
A report issued by Im Tirtzu supports the government's decision to set
up an inquiry commission into the activity and funding of left-wing
organizations in Israel.
The report, published for the first time by Ynet Monday night, claims
that Arab and European countries support Palestinian funds which
donate to leftist movements in Israel "in order to influence public
and legal discourse in Israeli and international media."
According to Im Tirtzu, a centrist extra-parliamentary movement that
"strives to strengthen the values of Zionism in Israel," the findings
prove the need for the establishment of an inquiry commission. The
report focuses on two Palestinian organizations – the Welfare
Association and the NGO Development Center –which it claims work
together to fund pro-Palestinian activities in Israel and the
territories.
The report states that the organizations' yearly budget, which is
estimated at tens of millions of dollars, comes from a number of
sources: Countries and organizations in Europe - including the
European Union, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland and Denmark – as well as
Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab
Emirates, Algeria and Qatar.
According to Im Tirtzu, large banks, such as the Islamic Development
Bank, as well as Arab funds, also allocate money to the Welfare
Association and the NGO Development Center, which then transfer 97% of
the funds to Palestinians in the territories and some 3% to leftist
Israeli organizations.
The report also claims that the Welfare Association is directly
involved in Arab activity in Israel, including a campaign against
obligating Arab youths to participate in Israel's National Service
program.
Im Tirtzu said that among the Israeli organizations to receive funds
from the Welfare Association are Adalah, Mada al-Carmel and the
Galilee Society.
According to the report, $2.65 million were allocated by the Welfare
Association to finance activity in Israel, specifically to boost the
socio-economic status of Arab-Israelis and to preserve and foster
Palestinian national identity.
The Welfare Association also supports two local councils – Nazareth
and Kafr Kana.
Over the past few years the Welfare Association's annual budget stood
at roughly $40 million, making it one of the key channels for the
transfer of funds to the Palestinians.
'Funding from Saudi Arabia'
A Ynet inquiry revealed that Iran, Syrian and Lebanon are members of
the Islamic Development Bank, which is one of the Welfare
Association's financial backers.
In 2000, Following the outbreak of the second intifada, the bank
established two funds to assist the Palestinians "in the face of
continued Israeli aggression" – the Al-Aqsa Fund and the Al-Quds
Intifada fund.
The report shows that between 2005 and 2008 the Welfare Association
transferred nearly $3 million to Israeli organizations working, among
other things, to strengthen Arab identity, promote the right of return
agenda and support the campaign against National Service for
Arab-Israelis.
In 2006, the NGO Development Center (NDC) was founded on the
organizational infrastructure of the Welfare Association to launch
projects in the Palestinian sector. The NDC projects were funded by
the World Bank and a number of European countries.
According to Im Tirtzu, the NDC is involved in the funding of Israeli
and Palestinian organizations promoting activities against Israeli
policy and the IDF.
According to the reports published by Im Tirtzu, between 2008 and 2009
it transferred close to $2.4 million to Israeli organizations and
about $3.5 million to Palestinian organizations. In 2009 alone, the
organization transferred nearly $2 million to 13 different Israeli
organizations, including B'Tselem, Mossawa, Adalah, Breaking the
Silence, Yesh Din, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the Public
Committee against Torture, HaMoked Center for the Defense of the
Individual and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
Fifteen left-wing organizations declared last week that they have
"nothing to hide," following the motion to establish an inquiry
commission. However, the report said that "an intensive and thorough
examination of the funding sources of these organizations and of
public documents and online sites of Arab foundations, Islamic banks,
Arab media and international research – finds there is extensive
support of Arab sources funding extreme left organizations in Israel."
Im Tirtzu claimed that "Arab money funds these organizations working
to de-legitimize the State of Israel, calling to boycott Israel,
aiding to put Israeli officials on trial for war crimes, strengthening
the Palestinian identity of Israeli-Arabs and disconnecting their
affinity to Israel, as well as strengthening the Palestinian-Islamic
hold on Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, the Negev and Galilee."
B'Tselem officials responded to the claims: "Unlike the unfounded
report of Im Tirtzu, the B'Tselem organization is funded by four
Israeli-friendly countries: Switzerland, Denmark, Holland and Sweden.
The money comes from the countries themselves and the NDC is used to
transfer the money. Im Tirtzu is welcome to file a complaint with the
police if they have further accusations and claims."
Breaking the Silence is blaming Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
"Apparently the foreign minister, who's being treated as a
persona-non-grata by the western world, has decided to turn Israel
into a leper and ruin its relations with Switzerland, Denmark, Holland
and Sweden. Breaking the Silence received donations only from friendly
countries and if the foreign minister, the government and their
strategic partners from Im Tirtzu wish to turn them into enemy states,
they have the diplomatic tools to do so," it said.
The Adalah organization also rejected the claims, saying, "The Welfare
Association is an international foundation which has been operating
for dozens of years, supporting human rights organizations and social
organizations, enjoying a well respected and important status in
European countries, with its headquarters in Geneva. No one has ever
disputed its integrity. It was never claimed that the foundation
supports or funds any illegal activity. And so its support of
renovating of structures in Jerusalem is not only legal but blessed,
and follows the norms of the international law. As far as the NGO
Development Center – not only is it a completely legal foundation, but
it is also supported by many west European governments."
Yuval Mann and Avigail Lushi contributed to the report
See also: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141662
Links Between B'Tselem, Terror Funds Reported
3. The newest bogeyman in Israel is a threatening tape supposedly
sent to the Deputy Prosecutor Shai Nitzan. The tape, posted on the
web, carries the images of the Kahanists, which does not necessarily
prove they are behind it. For what it is worth, they deny being so.
While I have no problem denouncing whoever is behind the tape, I
think it also behooves us to recall the long anti-democratic track
record of political persecution operated personally by Shai Nitzan. I
re-post here an older piece about him:
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/41835/
THE BUKAY AFFAIR AND ISRAEL'S PROSECUTORIAL DOUBLE STANDARD
By: Steven Plaut
Date: Wednesday, December 16 2009
An outrageous assault by Israeli authorities against academic freedom
of speech took place in recent days in what is becoming known as the
Bukay Affair. The affair combines leftist undermining of democracy,
the attempt at thought control by governmental officials and the
police, harassment of a university lecturer by an over-zealous
prosecutor, and an attempt to create in Israel a political Inquisition
against incorrect thinking.
The saga revolves around Dr. David Bukay, a lecturer in Middle East
Studies at the University of Haifa, with expertise in Arab history.
Bukay speaks Arabic better than I speak English. He has conservative
points of view and is very outspoken about them. His articles are
carried by numerous journals.
About five years ago Bukay was the victim of a smear campaign at the
University of Haifa. At the time, an Arab student who was active in
the university branch of the communist party sat in on one of Bukay's
lectures without being registered in the class. The student then ran
to the Arabic press in Israel and claimed that in his lecture Bukay
had repeatedly made derogatory comments about Arabs. The student
claimed Bukay had said in class that all Arabs should be shot.
It turned out the story was planted and spread by an Israeli leftist
who later issued a retraction and an apology to Bukay, admitting the
entire story had been a tissue of lies. But the retraction did not
help. Anti-Semitic websites, including some run by neo-Nazis, still
carry the story of Bukay's alleged racist statements against Arabs.
Once the story began to spread, it became evident that none of the
other students in the classroom had heard Bukay make any of the racist
statements he was alleged to have made. Many of these students claimed
the Arab student had fabricated the entire story. Hundreds of Bukay's
students backed Bukay. Many wrote the Haifa University chiefs to give
their side of the story.
In any case, because of the uproar, the rector at the University of
Haifa, himself no right-winger (he was a founder of Peace Now),
appointed a committee of investigation to look into the charges
against Bukay. The committee found the charges were lies.
But in response to the media uproar, the Israel state deputy
prosecutor, Shai Nitzan, decided to open a criminal investigation
against Bukay for the "crime" of "incitement." That is the catch-all
anti-democratic nonsense charge that was used in a wholesale manner
after the Rabin assassination to persecute, intimidate and indict
numerous rabbis, public figures, and protesters.
Nitzan evidently believes that left-wing lawyers should be able to
dictate the content of university lectures and the police should
indict those who say things Nitzan considers to be incorrect.
For about four years the story was nearly forgotten. Until last week.
What changed? The same Shai Nitzan, still the deputy director of the
Israel Prosecutor's Office, ordered Bukay to come to the Haifa police
precinct as part of the renewal of the earlier investigation into
alleged criminally incorrect thinking and speaking by Bukay in his
classroom.
At the Haifa police precinct, Bukay was ordered to sign a written
confession that he had made anti-Arab statements in the classroom. He
was ordered by police operating under Nitzan's instructions to sign an
apology for those statements, under threat of being prosecuted for
"incitement" and "racism" if he did not do so. And he was ordered to
promise in writing to refrain from ever again making such statements
in his classroom.
Bukay refused to sign.
Maariv deputy editor Ben-Dror Yemini wrote in response to this that
interrogating and prosecuting lecturers for what they say in the
classroom is without precedent in Israel or any democracy. He reminded
readers that Israel is filled with far left anti-Israel and
anti-Semitic academics who routinely use the classroom to support
terrorism against Jews, to call for Israel's annihilation, to denounce
Israel as a Nazi-like apartheid regime, and to urge law breaking.
Not a single one of the latter has ever been interrogated, let along
prosecuted. Yet here we have the spectacle of a naked political
persecution of someone accused of having made politically incorrect
statements in his classroom - a claim he denies.
Now as it turns out, even if Bukay had made the anti-Arab statements
he was falsely accused of having made, they still should have been
protected speech - as are outbursts that are made in scores of Israeli
university classrooms on a daily basis by Israel's tenured radicals.
Since when is it the job of the police to arrest and prosecute people
who make offensive or incorrect statements?
But, alas, Israel has a long history of selective
protection of freedom of speech. Countless Israeli right-wingers have
been indicted and prosecuted for "racism," "sedition," and
"incitement" - while Jewish leftists and Arab radicals never have
been, even when cheering on terrorism and demanding that Israel be
annihilated.
The courts have repeatedly endorsed anti-speech prosecution and
litigation directed against non-leftists while protecting and
defending the most outrageous hate speech of leftist traitors. In one
infamous court case, an Israeli sitting judge ruled that leftist
sedition is protected speech while criticism of leftist sedition is
libel.
One thing is certain. Israeli democracy is under attack by Shai
Nitzan, and Israeli freedom of speech and academic freedom will not be
safe until he has been summarily dismissed from his position.
4. Europe's Irresponsible Gaza Policy
The unconditional removal of Israel's defensive measures would only
help Hamas's military build-up.
By AVIGDOR LIBERMAN
In the past nine years, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have launched
more than 11,000 rockets and mortars at towns in southern Israel. This
extraordinary situation, unlike anywhere in Europe, has compelled
Israel to take appropriate actions to fulfill what is any government's
primary duty: the protection of its citizens. I have no doubt that any
other country would have employed similar, if not more extreme,
measures to fight a threat of this magnitude.
The root of the problem lies in the weaponry, money and personnel that
are constantly being smuggled into the Gaza Strip through tunnels that
have been burrowed underneath the border separating Gaza from the
Sinai Peninsula. The Gaza Strip has been ruled by the Iranian-backed
Hamas since its coup d'état against Fatah in 2007. The aggression and
terrorism of the Hamas regime is the reason the government led by
former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert instituted the restrictions on Gaza
in 2007 and was compelled to conduct the defensive Operation Cast Lead
in 2008.
In light of these facts, the European Union's recent "Conclusions on
the Middle East Peace Process" calling for an "immediate, sustained
and unconditional opening of crossings" to and from Gaza are puzzling
and unlikely to assist efforts toward progress in our region. It
confuses the source of the current problem with one of its
symptoms.This is unfortunate, because there is much that the EU and
Israel can jointly do to improve the current state of affairs.
The unconditional removal of Israel's defensive measures would be
counterproductive and only help Hamas's military build-up, which
continues largely at the behest of Iran. Moreover, if the crossings
were unconditionally opened, Iran will immediately take advantage of
this situation through its proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah. These
terrorist groups will be able to destabilize the Palestinian Authority
in Judea and Samaria. Such a demand is irresponsible, immoral and
unjustified.
The EU also seems to ignore the plight of Israeli soldier Gilad
Shalit. Kidnapped by Hamas more than four years ago, he remains cut
off from the world and his family. To this day, not even the Red Cross
has been allowed to visit him, in utter disregard of the most
fundamental humanitarian principles. Rather than pressing for Gilad
Shalit's release and searching for ways to effectively stem the flow
of weapons, the EU is pressuring Israel to rescind the necessary
restrictions.
The root of the problem: the tunnels for smuggling weapons into Gaza.
As existing and previous attempts to stanch the smuggling have clearly
failed, a different approach needs to be considered. If the EU wishes
to genuinely address the source of the problem, it should contemplate
stationing an effective European or international force along the
Philadelphi Corridor and at the Rafiah Crossing, the Egyptian-Gaza
border areas under which most of the tunnels for weapons smuggling
into Gaza have been built. To elicit a change in the situation, such a
force would have to be robust in both operational capabilities and
mandate and willing to confront Hamas. We cannot allow a return to the
ineffective EUBAM mission, which unilaterally vacated its positions at
the Rafiah Crossing upon Hamas's seizure of power in Gaza.
I can affirm that a cessation of the smuggling will lead to the
lifting of restrictions. However, the State of Israel cannot be
expected to forgo its fundamental security interests without the
removal of this grave threat and the ongoing assault against Israeli
towns that it continues to fuel.
The State of Israel and the EU have a joint interest in the emergence
of a regime in Gaza that will recognize Israel and prior signed
agreements and which will completely desist from terrorism. Such an
outcome will come about solely through development and economic
growth. Israel and Europe should enhance their cooperation in stemming
the flow of weapons and in promoting economic development in Gaza, in
a manner similar to what we are witnessing in Judea and Samaria (the
West Bank).
Economic growth and the consistent rise in the standard of living
among the inhabitants of Judea and Samaria are living proof of
fruitful cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
With improvements in the security situation in Judea and Samaria,
Israel relaxed the security measures and enhanced the mobility of the
Palestinian population. Over the past year, more than two-thirds of
the road-blocks have been removed. The Palestinians made the most of
these new conditions. Their economy is booming and tourism to the area
has witnessed a dramatic increase. This basic pattern can serve as a
model for Gaza.
During the past year, the Israeli government has taken courageous
steps designed to modify and improve the economic environment in Gaza.
There has been a substantial increase in the quantities and variety of
products and there are mechanisms in place to facilitate the sale of
Gaza products abroad. In addition, our government is promoting
infrastructure projects with third parties such as European countries,
the United States and United Nations agencies.
I believe that close coordination between the EU and Israel can bring
about a greater change in Gaza, both with respect to the regime in
control and with respect to the standard of living. Such coordination
will have to include an effective response to the weapons smuggling
and a steadfast stance against Hamas and other terrorist
organizations.
Mr. Liberman is deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Israel.