Tuesday, October 30, 2007
New Career Ideas for Ex-MK's
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/1#2369
Haaretz October 30, 07 reports that ex-Knesset Members who failed to get
re-elected are having trouble finding careers and employment. You see, it
is almost de rigueur for Israeli parliament candidate not to have any
serious credentials or gainful employment skills. The Knesset is really a
large dole office for the unemployable and talentless.
So when a Knesset Member fails to make it into the chamber in the
primaries and elections, he or she faces a midlife crisis. A research
study in the UK by one Prof. Thickstone finds that ex-MP's there also have
crises. The Haaretz piece reports that Likud ex-MK Gila Gamliel is now
teaching cosmetics in the "Gigi Academy of Cosmetics." Ilan Gilon from
Meretz is a radio show announcer.
Now I am sure you will agree with me that this is a serious national
problem. Having served their country so well, we would not want these
valuable members of society to waste away in indolence and sloth!
So we at Israel National News have approached late night TV host David
Letterman to ask him to prepare a list of ten career suggestions for
unemployed ex-members of the Knesset. Pickpocket was too obvious, given
their previous experience, so we asked that it not be included. The
Ish-Michtavim was kind enough to help us out.
Ready? Here goes.
Tonight's Top Ten List from Dave Letterman! The top ten career suggestions
for unemployed ex-MK's:
10. Train as Gefilte Fishmongers.
9. Give them accordion lessons, teach them Russian, and send them
downtown.
8. Teach them to drive bulldozers and aim them at the International
Solidarity Movement protesters.
7. Let them serve as human shields for important buildings in Sderot.
6. Assign them to take charge of turning off the electricity to the Gaza
Strip but don't show them how to turn it on again.
5. Pretend to be academics and get tenure at Ben Gurion University.
4. Try to find a single sentence written by a conspiracy nut that is
truthful. (A contest for this exists and there is money in it!)
3. Let them prepare the Knesset building for shabbas by spending Friday
tearing off squares of toilet paper.
2. Teach them to ask "Any fries with that?"
1. Assign them to give Ehud Olmert some very thorough prostate
examinations.
2.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B8A4C3AC-C1FA-4FCA-8848-E52FDA72B5F4
The Left and the Term "Islamo-Fascism"
By Dennis Prager
FrontPageMagazine.com | 10/30/2007
Last week, at universities around America, the conservative activist David
Horowitz organized "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week." The week featured a guest
speaker, the showing of the documentary, Obsession, about radical Islam, and
related activities.
As one of those speakers -- at the University of California at Santa Barbara --
I was particularly interested in the controversy Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week
engendered as well as in the larger question of whether the term
"Islamo-Fascism" is valid.
Various Muslim student groups condemned these awareness weeks and the term
itself, charging that both are no more than expressions of anti-Muslim bigotry,
i.e., "Islamophobia." Nevertheless, Muslim student groups decided not to
actively disrupt the week. Therefore, most of the opposition to Islamo-Fascism
Awareness Week events came from leftist student groups.
This opposition took the form of opposing funding of speakers invited to
campus; writing articles in campus newspapers attacking the speakers, the
Awareness Week, and the term "Islamo-Fascism" as essentially racist; and in
some cases disrupting the speech.
I experienced the first two forms of leftist opposition; David Horowitz
experienced the third as well. He was invited to speak at Emory University, but
leftist students packed the hall and shouted him down. Emory officials did
nothing to stop the harassment and the suppression of speech, and Horowitz was
unable to deliver his talk. It is considerably more difficult to get
conservative speakers invited to most American universities -- or for them to
be able to speak without being harassed -- than it is for a Holocaust-denying,
genocide-advocating leader, such as Iran's Ahmadinejad at Columbia University,
to deliver a speech at an American university.
In my case, about a quarter of the 300 students who came to my talk at UCSB
were leftists opposed to my coming. But they allowed me to deliver my remarks
without once trying to shout me down. There were, I believe, three reasons for
this. One is that UCSB has a relatively calm political climate. Second, there
was a serious police presence and it was clear that disrupters would be
removed, if not arrested. Third, students told me afterward that I disarmed
those who came to oppose me. Contrary to the demonized figure they had assumed
I am -- in one UCSB student newspaper column, I was compared to a Ku Klux
Klanner for speaking on Islamo-Fascism -- they saw a decent man, a sometimes
funny guy, and heard a low-keyed, intellectual speech that contained not one
word of gratuitous hatred.
It is worth mentioning that following my lecture, the student who wrote the
column comparing me to a Ku Klux Klanner came over to me and said he was
writing a column of apology to me and asked to be photographed with me. This is
not surprising. Students at most universities are almost brainwashed into being
leftist -- and the way they are taught to disagree with their political
opponents is by using ad hominem attacks. Conservatives are described over and
over as mean-spirited, war-loving, greedy, bigoted, racist, xenophobic,
Islamophobic, homophobic, sexist, intolerant and oblivious to human suffering.
Such ad hominem labels are the Left's primary rhetorical weapons. So when
leftist students are actually confronted with even one articulate conservative,
many enter a world of cognitive dissonance. That is one reason why universities
rarely invite conservatives to speak: they might change some students' minds.
Regarding the term "Islamo-Fascism," most students heard the arguments I
presented for the legitimacy of the term for the first time in their lives.
Very briefly summarized, these arguments were:
First, the term is not anti-Muslim. One may object to the term on factual
grounds, i.e., one may claim that there are no fascistic behaviors among people
acting in the name of Islam -- but such a claim is a denial of the obvious.
So, once one acknowledges the obvious, that there is fascistic behavior among a
core of Muslims -- specifically, a cult of violence and the wanton use of
physical force to impose an ideology on others -- the term "Islamo-Fascism" is
entirely appropriate.
Second, the question then arises as to whether that term is anti-Muslim in that
it besmirches the name of Islam and attempts to describe all Muslims as
fascist. This objection, too, has a clear response.
The term no more implies all Muslims or Islam is fascistic than the term
"German fascism" implied all Germans were fascists or "Italian fascism" or
"Japanese fascism" implied that all Italians or all Japanese were fascists.
Indeed, even religious groups have been labeled as fascist. During World War
II, for example, Croatian Catholic fascists were called Catholic Fascists, and
no one argued that the term was invalid because it purportedly labeled all
Catholics or Catholicism fascist. When the left uses the term "American
imperialism," are they implying that all Americans are imperialists? Then why
does Islamo-Fascism label all Muslims?
Third, given the horrors being perpetrated by some Muslims in the name of Islam
-- from the genocide currently being practiced by the Islamic Republic of
Sudan, to the mass murders of innocents in Iraq, Israel, America, Britain,
Bali, Thailand, the Philippines and elsewhere -- what term is more accurate
than "Islamo-Fascism"? "Islamic totalitarianism"? "Jihadists"? "Bad Muslims"?
The Left's organized crusade against Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week was simply
the latest shame in the long and shameful history of the Left's inability to
confront those engaged in great evil -- like the Left's ferocious opposition
during the Cold War to labeling communism as "totalitarian" or "evil" and its
nearly universal condemnation of President Ronald Reagan's description of the
Soviet Union as an "evil empire."
That Muslim student groups and other Muslim organizations joined with the Left
in the ad hominem condemnation of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week was most
unfortunate. Many Muslims know well that there is indeed such a thing as
Islamo-Fascism, and they should be the first to join in fighting it. It is not
those who use the term "Islamo-Fascism" who are sullying the name of Islam; it
is the Islamo-Fascists.
________________________________________
Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show based in Los
Angeles. He is the author of four books, most recently "Happiness is a Serious
Problem" (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com. To find out more
about Dennis Prager, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
See also
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=2BE8DE4E-CA84-4AC7-A0D6-7A3EA0151139
Take back the campus:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=70A65E51-2842-40D1-B3B9-F7D50CE8F84D
and also
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F02DFAAF-6996-45CF-A384-310296A0EE43
and
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C4E44D2B-9A12-4C23-ABA1-12B71D02ADD7
3. Was Katsav innocent after all?
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3465691,00.html
4. Important piece from NGO Monitor
The Treasonous Machsom Watch:
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article.php?id=1672
5. Mazuz serving his real constituents - the Palestinians:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124080
6. Terrorists finds help in Walt and Mearsheimer:
http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzVmODk3ZDYwMTkxZjQ3MjAxNGZmNzNjNTNmMTI5NGI=
7. Yet another Israel Hater from Ben Gurion University:
See original article for hyperlinks
http://israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_advic&advice_id=5786&page_data[id]=171&cookie_lang=en&the_session_id=110a819e8d3c8e7d031fa1fea5c82b10
An "academic conference" in London gives an Israeli quisling a chance to
shine: Prof. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin
By Lee Kaplan
Imagine if, before America's entrance into World War II, Hitler's Nazi
machine began a program of injecting German academics into all the German
Studies departments at universities and colleges all over America.
Professors from distinguished universities in the Reich, well-skilled in
English, would be sent on paid sabbaticals to American institutions of
higher learning where "academic freedom" (frequently misinterpreted
today), would allow them to teach bright-eyed college students about the
merits of the Third Reich as a misunderstood human rights and social
justice movement for the German people who were betrayed by Europe's Jews
at Verseilles.
For good measure, some Jewish academics would be included in the program,
highly paid, with excellent travel perks and profitable guaranteed
publishing rights, to present the Reich's case that Germany really has
nothing against Jews as Jews, but is really fighting Jewish Bolsheviks and
subversives who even control the media and all industry in America, and
whose nationalism as Jews is contrary to human rights and social justice.
Later, American-based professors who were part of such a program would
also be sent to Great Britain, then at war with Nazi Germany, to discuss
in British colleges the folly of opposing German goals of reunifying
Europe under one banner of equality and justice for all. But the main
spokespeople at such symposiums would be Jewish professors to lend the
utmost credibility to the program. For good measure, those Jewish
academics would always identify themselves as different from other Jews,
whose nationalistic and conspiratorial goals were different from other
Jews.
Would the allies have won the Second World War?
A case in point is an "academic symposium" taking place in Britain this
month led by Palestinian irredentists. And, of course, there are the token
Israeli academics in attendance to lend credibility to the exercise.
After all, if Jewish intellectuals can agree with the goals of so many
Arab and Muslim intellectuals about their desperate need to dismantle a
Jewish state, how can the Arabs be wrong?
The event, at the University of London, is titled " Challenging the
Boundaries: A Single State in Palestine/Israel" to be held November
17th-18th in 2007 and features several British-based Arab "academics,"
as well as some other stars from the Palestinian revolutionary movement at
US universities against Israel like Joseph Massad of Columbia who
supports terrorist attacks against Israelis.
Here's an example of a description of just one of the panels at the
symposium:
"This panel provides a platform for internal debate on the desired
institutional and constitutional formation of the state which is commonly
dichotomized into the bi-national model on one side and multicultural
democracy on the other."
If you had to read the above description more than once, to understand it,
you're not alone. Let me translate it:
"This panel is designed to develop new ideas of subversion affecting the
multicultural and pluralistic democracy that is Israel today, to prevent
the solution of two states side by side in peace from ever happening, and
trying to propose a single state of Palestine with an Arab majority and
new constitution of their own running things."
Never mind that the current constitution of the Palestinian Authority,
funded by USAID funds from pluralistic America and even with the consent
of pluralistic Israel, is based on Sharia Islamic Law , the same as the
constitutions of Saudi Arabia and Iran. And never mind that the other Arab
"academics" on the panel are in fact political activists with an axe to
grind like Joseph Massad, who addresses his Israeli students at Columbia
with comments such as "How many Palestinians did you kill today?" Ali
Abunimah , another symposium guest, is active with Al Awda (The Return)
whose motto is "From the river to the sea."
And true to form, the panel has its academic Jewish quislings to lend
support to its real purposes. One of those academics is Israeli history
professor Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin of Ben Gurion University.
Raz-Krakotzkin objects to Jews (but not Palestinian Arabs) seeking a
national homeland for both religious and secular reasons, and has used the
Arab term "Nakba" ("catastrophe" in Arabic, meaning the founding of
Israel).
In discussing secular Israeli Jews, perhaps the majority of Israelis in
the only democracy in the Middle East, he says, "They are called 'secular'
because they reject or abandon the Halakha, the Jewish law, but the myth
that defines the so-called national-secular is itself based on an
interpretation of the theological myth, according to which the present
Jewish existence in Palestine is the return of the Jews to their homeland
(considered to be empty!) the fulfillment of Jewish history and of the
prayers of the Jews."
The above says a lot from this historian from Ben Gurion University. He
not only declares the Torah as replete with Jewish "myths" about the land
of Israel belonging to the Jews, a fairy tale among the religious (who,
and in contradiction by him, if they were true to the faith would not
want a Jewish state), but expands his interpretation to debunk secular
Jews who also feel a connection to a Jewish national homeland as a result
of world genocide and persecution as also being founded on the same myth.
He also ignores that the majority of land that made up Israel prior to
1948 was legally purchased by the Jewish Agency (who do you buy land from
in a country that's empty?!).
Meanwhile, Raz-Krakotzkin ignores what is principally the pan-Arab
nationalism and fascism mixed with good old fashioned Islamic hatred of
Jews that guides the side he is working with so as to promote the creation
of a single state of "Palestine." He does not mention that the Koran
also says the land of Israel belongs to the Jews, nor does he condemn
calls within that same document that is the basis of the current
constitution of the Palestinian Authority. In other words, his Arab
colleagues can have all the nationalist and religious aspirations they
want, including replacing Israel with one state, "Palestine," and a new
constitution to be supervised by the very clan that already rejects any
civil society by refusing to even condemn terrorism against Jews.
Raz-Krakotzkin continues, "Nationalism is not a replacement of the
theological myth but an interpretation of the myth. Therefore the very
distinction between "secular" and "religious" identities in Israel is
problematic. I do not want to undermine the differences, or to ignore the
real danger of religious-nationalistic groups. But I argue that the
origins of these radical right-wing groups are not to be found in Jewish
religion, but in the secular interpretation of the myth. Therefore,
without understanding these aspects, one cannot suggest a real alternative
to the ideology of the right-wing settlers. Israel is not a secular state
and not a nation state. It is considered as the "state of the Jewish
people" to include citizens of other countries, but through the exclusion
of its Arab citizens, and their systematic dispossession."
In short, Raz-Kratkotzin says that Jews have no claim to Eretz Yisrael
either biblically or as a secular ethnic movement, and the Jewish state
excludes its Arab citizens and "disposseses them." Of course, Israel
currently has a large Arab poplulation with equal civil rights , and even
affirmative action programs for them, and it's his Arab colleagues who
insist that Jews living in communities in Judea and Samaria built on
public lands are ok to dispossess as the Palestinians make the area
Jew-free and run their new country according to Islamic Law.
The United Nations legally set up Israel as a nation-state as well as a
separate one next door for the Arabs that the Arabs themselves rejected.
Had the Arabs succeeded in 1948 in driving the Jews who legally owned
property all over the Holy Land into the sea, can anyone serously believe
the Arab world would have given any land back today? Israeli Arabs today
get free health care and are entitled to equal rights as Israeli citizens
by law, so Raz-Krakotzin would seem less a historical scholar and academic
who knows what he's talking about than a mouthpiece for Arab propaganda.
He confirms this in a statement about the First and Second Intifadas:
"The Intifada started after the killing of seven people in the Mosque,
the day after the provocative visit of Ariel Sharon [to the Temple Mount].
In the beginning, it was mainly expressed in mass demonstrations, with
shooting against settlers - but at this stage there were no terror attacks
from the kind we knew later, with the suicide bombers."
He continues, "The sense of depression and disappointment among the
Palestinian people were well known. The peace process provided minimal
autonomy to certain parts of the Palestinians in the occupied
territories."
Some historian. The First Intifada resulted in the deaths of 160 Israeli
Jews who were killed merely for being Jews by Arabs and was not limited to
just Jews in the "occupied territories" of Judea and Samaria. Over 1,000
Arabs also died, most of them killed by other Arabs who accused them of
collaboration with the Jews , as well. More than 3,600 Molotov cocktail
attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks and 600 assaults with guns or
explosives were reported by the Israel Defense Forces . The violence was
directed at soldiers and civilians alike. The Mosque killings
Raz-Krakotzin refers to were the act of one insane individual, not Israeli
government policy whereas the PLO government organized and paid gangs to
attack Jews and other Israelis hundreds of times.
But Raz-Krakotzin also shows us his faulty scholarship in attributing the
Intifada to Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in the year 2000 as
being the catalyst, despite admissions by the leadership of the PLO that
the Second Intifada was planned in advance. There is audio and video proof
of this. Sharon's visit, a stroll by a Jewish leader who was demonstrating
Jews have a right to visit Judaism's holiest shrine (surrounded by a ton
of Israeli armed Israeli border guards to stave off attacks), was used as
an excuse to start the violence. Sharon did not enter or approach the
two mosques on the sites that comprise only 3% of the Temple Mount.
Despite these important facts, The Palestinian Arab narrative persists in
the media and in the classrooms of our major universities with the same
misinformation Israeli professors like Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin are more than
happy to repeat at this London symposium.
For an academic historian, symposiums like this provides world-renowned
attention as an "academic authority" and visits to far off cities like
London and New York where one can be taken as a serious intellectual. All
he has to do is repeat Arab propaganda and false history to promote
changing Israel into "Palestine."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
-=Fighting Against Academic Boycotts on Israel=-
-=Monitoring Anti-Israel Publications of Israeli Academics=-
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