Zionist Conspiracy

A Litmus Test For Opponents of the "Nakba Law"

By Steven Plaut

The Israeli media and the Israeli Left, which largely overlap, have been hysterical in recent days over a proposed bill that would make it illegal to hold anti-Israel "mourning" events on Israel's Independence Day, events that would declare Israel's very existence a "Nakba" (or catastrophe in Arabic)l. "Nakba" commemorations are in essence events in which Jewish leftist and Arab fascist haters of Israel call for Israel to be annihilated. The "Anti-Nakba" bill, which is unlikely to pass the Knesset in any case, proposes to ban these, and has triggered hysterical opposition.

There are two types of people posturing their outrage at the proposed "Anti-Nakba" law. One consists of free speech absolutists. The other consists of anti-democratic haters of Israel, many of them people with a neo-fascist disdain for freedom of speech. The first group truly believes in freedom of speech, even for radicals, traitors, and extremists. The second group consists of people who are fighting against the "anti-Nakba law" because they agree with the "Nakba nuts" that Israel's very existence is a catastrophe, something that should be corrected by means of exterminating Israel.

There is a very easy litmus test that distinguishes between these two groups. If the opponent of the "anti-Nakba law" is someone who spoke out clearly in the 1990s against the anti-democratic campaign against "incitement" in Israel, then that person is part of the first group, the free speech absolutists. If the person endorsed the 1990s Israeli campaign against "incitement" or simply kept quiet and failed to speak up against it, then that person belongs to the second group, the people who agree that Israel's very existence is a catastrophe.

Let me explain.

When Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by Yigal Amir in November 1995, his body was not yet cold when the Israeli political establishment, led by the Israeli Labor Party, launched a broadside assault against freedom of speech in Israel. It repeated endlessly that Rabin had in fact been killed by the exercise of freedom of speech by anti-Oslo dissidents. It insisted that those who had disagreed with Rabin's Oslo initiative were collectively guilty of murdering Rabin. Hundreds of people were investigated and interrogated for suspicion of "incitement." The "judicial activists" in Israel's legal system failed to protect the victims of the anti-democratic McCarthyism.

In any real democracy, "incitement" is not a crime at all unless it is an added-on charge for someone actually engaged in violence or real crime. But in the aftermath of the Rabin assassination Israeli dissidents were hounded and prosecuted for expressing their opinions, including some rabbis.

In the anti-democratic hysteria after the assassination, Israelis
were carted off by the bus load for interrogation for "incitement." In some cases the circumstances were comically absurd. A man was arrested for cracking a joke in a bank; when the clerk asked "Who's next in line?" he had remarked "Peres." A Zionist Federation employee named Moshe Cohen was arrested for "incitement" when drinking at a caf?, because an eavesdropper claimed he was "inciting." (See http://www.jewishpost.com/archives/letter-to-the-editor/letter-to-the-editor-from-steven-plaut-3.html ) Moshe Feiglin was convicted of "sedition" because he dared to hold anti-Oslo protests that blocked a traffic artery.

The "theory" that Rabin was killed by freedom of speech was repeated
endlessly by the political elite, and assumed the status of sacred revealed gospel. The government approved a decision to make a growing list of organizations on the Israeli far-Right illegal. Kahanists were criminalized and denied freedom of speech under Israel's silly and arbitrary "anti-racism laws," which have never been used to prosecute leftist or Arab anti-Semites. A series of aggressive measures designed to prosecute those engaging in "incitement and agitation" was instituted. Right-wing protesters of various stripes, especially those from the "Women in Green," were arrested and prosecuted for various charges. Minor teenage protester girls were held in prison even before being tried.

In this atmosphere of hysteria countless examples of legitimate exercises of freedom of speech were persecuted and suppressed. A faculty member wearing a pro-settlement button at Weizmann Institute was threatened with expulsion. A Haifa teacher-rabbi was fired from his school teacher job for expressing the opinion that Rabin's political ideology should not be taught as theology in schools. Youths peacefully holding up protest signs against the eviction of Jewish settlers from Gaza were jailed. Rabbis writing scholarly articles about Rabbinic law were arrested for "racism" and "incitement." Police were ordered to tear down posters on public billboards placed by anti-Oslo protesters. People wearing tee shirts with politically incorrect slogans and people with rightist bumper stickers on their cars were harassed and interrogated by the authorities. (For more examples, see this http://www.primechoice.com/philosophy/shelp/speechisrael.htm )

The assertions that Rabin was killed by the exercise of freedom of speech were even more frightening and dangerous than the assassination itself. They were absurd and false. Rabin was not killed by free speech, but by a murderer with a gun. There is no reason to think that Yigal Amir would have behaved any differently if opponents of Rabin's policies had all spoken in gentile calm quiet tones rather than shouting angrily. And if "vile speech" causes assassination, then Israel should have had an endless carnage of its political leaders ever since Independence (if not beforehand).

Israeli political discourse is and has always been characterized by rhetorical overkill, ad hominem slander, and unrestrained high-decibel shrieking. Vile speech is not a monopoly of hotheads of the Israeli right, as the anti-Begin demonstrators in 1982-83 proved during Israel's "Peace in Galilee" Campaign in Lebanon. Their slogan was "Begin and Sharon are Murderers and War Criminals." No one was assassinated as a result of this and no one was prosecuted.

The criminalization of dissent continued even when the Labor Party was not in power. Despite being initially the main target of the anti-speech McCarthyist demonization of "incitement" in the 1990s, the Likud was just as capable of jumping on the anti-democratic bandwagon, no doubt as an attempt to "clear" suspicions about itself. The Likud closed down the rightist radio station "Arutz 7." The Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his cabinet on February 13, 2005, "Anyone who speaks or writes against the Disengagement Plan is guilty of incitement."

Many of the very same people now outraged at the idea of an
"Anti-Nakba Law" were the very same people cheering on the anti-democratic campaign of McCarthyism in the 1990s to suppress freedom of speech in Israel following the Rabin assassination. The very same far-leftist Israeli daily Haaretz that is now leading the campaign to defeat the proposed "Anti-Nakba Law" was also the leading force PROMOTING laws that suppress "incitement" and the exercise of freedom of speech by those opposed to the political agenda of the Left (see http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=130801&contrassID=2&subContrassID=3&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y&itemNo=130801 as one example).

So here is their test: You do not like the proposed "anti-Nakba Law"? Then prove to us that you are opposed to other infringements of freedom of speech in Israel! Show us what you have said or written against the 1990s McCarthyist campaign against "incitement" and dissident freedom of expression. Prove to us that you have opposed attempts to suppress freedom of speech at Tel Aviv University and elsewhere in Israeli academia. Demonstrate for us your track record of opposition to the criminalization of the freedom of speech of the Kahanists. Let us know what you have done to fight other measures designed to suppress freedom of speech, including the infamous anti-democratic SLAPP suit filed by Neo-Fascist Neve Gordon.

The alternative is to fail the litmus test.

2. Fast question. You know all those people who got upset at the
attempt by France to prevent Moslem women from wearing head scarves to
school and consider that o be anti-democratic? Well, how many of them
have spoken out against the prohibition of weaing a yarmulka to school
issued by the principal of the Herzliya Gymnasium in Tel Aviv, a story we
reported a few days ago?

The Knesset passed the "Nakba Law" in its initial first round of votes
yesterday. The law would make it a crime to commemorate Israel's
existence as a catastrophe or "Nakba", an event that Nakba Nitwits think
should be reversed. The Israeli Left is hysterical. If people cannot
call Israel's existence a catastrophe in the middle of a war, then how can
they be expected to be good leftists and how will the country ever be
annihilated?

Haaretz is leading the hysteria. It denounces the law all this week as
"racist." What is not racist? When Haaretz' Gideon Levy and Amira Hass
celebrate terrorist attacks and call for Israel to be exterminated.

Even worse, some Knesset members now are proposing that anyone taking
up Israeli citizenship would be expected to declare his or her loyalty to
the state of Israel. The Left is of course opposed to that as well, and
Haaretz today decrees that such an idea is also "racist." (Take a look at
this: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1088804.html - they cleaned up
their English version and took out the word "racism" ) It is one thing
for people in every other country in the world to be asked to pledge their
allegiance to the country whose citizenship they are applying to receive,
but Israel is crawling with Palestinians who try to get Israeli
citizenship by marrying Israeli Arabs and so it would be insensitive to
ask THEM to be loyal to the state whose citizenship they demand!

The Israeli Left has a long history of demanding selective free speech
absolutism. They want complete freedom of speech for treason and
anti-Semitism, so people can openly advocate mass murders of Jews,
terrorist atrocities, and of course Israel's annihilation. But
criticizing a leftist's public political writings should be prosecuted as
"libel" in SLAPP suits in courts. Universities should be required to
penalize professors who criticize the anti-Israel political activities of
leftist extremists. Newspapers should remain the occupied territories of
the Far Left. Non-leftists should be barred from getting university jobs.
And so on.

So what is the answer to the new Israeli leftist Nakba Lobby? I say it
is to sing to them! I have composed the very thing needed!

It is to the tune of Who's Sorry Now, made famous by Connie Francis
(also Dean Martin and others). If you are not familiar with that, take a
look at Connie herself singing it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjHJ_snG3RI (you kinda have to see her
singing it to appreciate what is coming!)

You can see the original lyrics to "Who's Sorry Now" here:
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/c/connie+francis/whos+sorry+now_20340104.html

Anyway, my poetic juices got going this morning, what with the counting of
the Omer having just been completed and all, and I have composed the
"Zionist Theme Song that Answers the Treasonous Nakba Left" marching song.
It is to the tune of Who's Sorry Now, with some minor adjustments in the
lyrics. Her 'tis:

New Nakba Now?
New Nakba Now?
Whose heart is calling for smashing them now?
Who's sad and blue?
Who's crying too?
Kick out the Nakbackers, Jew!?
Right to the end
Just like a friend
I tried to warn you somehow
They mustn't have their way,
And now they must pay
Let's make them really sorry now.
Right to the end
Just like a friend
We tried to warn them somehow:

You had your way,
But now you must pay
I'm glad that you're sorry now
New Nakba Now!
New Nakba Now!

Meanwhile, as a companion song, I have also rewritten the lyrics for
"Did you ever see a Lassie." The original lyrics are here:
http://www.kididdles.com/lyrics/d005.html

The new lyrics go like this, accompanied by choreography notes for those
wishing to dance to it:

Did You Ever See a Settler?

Did you ever see a settler,
A settler, a settler
Did you ever see a settler
Shoot this way and that?
(Girls curtsey)

Shoot this way and that way,
Shoot this way and that way
(Girls continue to curtsey)

Did you ever see a settler
(Girls stand still)

Shoot this way and that?
(Girls curtsey)

Boys Sing to Girls, or Partners:

Did you ever see a settler,
A settler, a settler
Did you ever see a settler
Shoot this way and that?
(Boys salute)

Shoot this way and that way,
Shoot this way and that way
(Boys continue to salute)

Did you ever see a settler
(Boys stand still)

Shoot this way and that?
(Boys salute)

One of the more amusing pastimes these days is watching the Israeli
do-gooders and bleeding hearts all racing out of their holes to wring
their hands and publicly rend their garments over the proposed "Anti-Nakba
Law." The bill, unlikely to pass in any case, would make it illegal to
hold public mourning ceremonies on Israeli Independence Day designed to
proclaim Israel's very existence a catastrophe or "Nakba." The "Nakba" is
the favorite new slogan of Israel's Far Left and of course also of most of
its disloyal Arabs. Leftist university faculty members have turned it
into the leftist alternative to Passover and Yom Kippur.

The hysterical Left is claiming that the law is an infringement of
freedom of speech. In other words, burning US flags can be made a crime
in democratic America, but public mourning ceremonies for the existence of
Israel in the middle of a war cannot.

Well, these free speech absolutists would have a bit more credibility
if they also came out against OTHER laws and rules designed to suppress
freedom of speech, and in particular against Israel's Orwellistic
"Anti-Racism Law." An older posting on that atrocity appears below.

The Left is always opposed to providing as sauce for the gander that
which serves as sauce for the goose. They are adamantly opposed to any
suppression of the rights of freedom of speech of anti-Israel traitors,
but cannot contain their delight that Kahanists and other far-Rightists
are denied freedom of speech and criminalized.

Here is the earlier posting:
http://www.jewishpress.com/content.cfm?contentid=17512

ISRAEL'S ANTI-DEMOCRATIC ANTI-RACISM LAW

By: Steven Plaut

Date: Wednesday, March 30 2005

In 1977 Israel's criminal code was changed. Section 144A was added, making
"racism" a crime. Racism was defined as "persecution, humiliation,
demeaning, displaying animosity, hostility, violence or strife towards a
population group or parts of such a group, all on the basis of skin color
or membership in a racial or ethnic-national grouping." It is still on the
books and is being enforced these days with new vigor.

At first glance, the law seems innocuous enough. After all, who can be in
favor of racism or against attempts to eliminate it?

But the main problems in this law quickly become clear. First, the law
criminalizes some expressions of speech and so infringes free speech.
Second, the definition of "racism" in the law is so vague as to render the
entire law arbitrary and useless. Third, in its implementation and
enforcement the law has already been used in an arbitrary and
anti-democratic manner for partisan purposes.

There is a clear and present danger that the law can be used in other
anti-democratic ways by people seeking to suppress free speech for those
with whom they disagree, simply by labeling these opinions "racist." This
is not just a theoretical potential danger but is increasingly the reality
in Israel. Rather than defeating extremist ideas by exposing them to
sunlight and forcing them to compete in the marketplace of ideas, the
anti-racism law criminalizes certain arbitrarily chosen forms of
expression.

The law has become a bludgeon to suppress free speech selectively, used
against some right-wing Israeli Jews. At the same time, there has never
been any attempt to prosecute Arabs or left-wing Jewish extremists under
the same law.

The immediate motivation for the framers of Israel's law was the
activities of some followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the
Jewish Defense League and later a right-wing parliamentarian and political
activist in Israel. The law's purpose was to suppress the freedom of
speech for these and some other fringe groups among Israeli Jews.

But even the campaign against Kahanism under the anti-racism law is highly
problematic. First, it is not entirely evident that Kahanist ideology is
racist, or at least more racist than that of many other groups whose
statements are usually regarded as protected speech. Kahane himself is
commonly regarded as a racist for certain unpleasant epitaphs he allegedly
applied to Arabs. But does that necessarily make anyone defining himself
as a follower of Kahane a racist? Karl Marx also used uncouth epitaphs
when speaking about Jews, black people, and others. Should everyone in
Israel defining himself as a Marxist be arrested for racism?

It is true that Kahanists have advocated the "population transfer" of
Arabs by forcing them to leave Israeli territory or subsidizing them to
leave. But, strictly speaking, even advocacy of "transfer" is not the same
as racism, and a person can conceivably be in favor of it for reasons
having nothing to do with racism or bigotry. Many decent people consider
the population transfer that took place in the Punjab in 1948 to be the
least of evils and a reasonable solution to the Indian-Pakistan conflict.

Israel has long been full of people, including politicians, who advocate
transferring the entire Jewish population out of the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip. No one has ever been prosecuted for such advocacy under the
same law that allows the prosecution of Kahanists for their advocating
"population transfer." True, those other people say they want this in
order to achieve peace, but the Kahanists say the same thing.

Most of the problems with the anti-racism law became clear soon after it
was passed by the Knesset. One of the first cases prosecuted under the law
was the State of Israel against Rabbi Ido Elba (Docket 2831/95). Rabbi
Elba had published a 14-page article on rabbinic law concerning murder.
His thesis was that in the Torah there are separate rabbinic laws applying
to killing of Jews, covered in the part of the Ten Commandments
prohibiting "murder," and the killing of Canaanite non-Jews living among
Jews, which was prohibited under a separate law given to all descendants
of Noah. That was the essence of Rabbi Elba's "racism."

The article was a scholarly exercise in explaining rabbinic laws and
especially the commentary by Maimonides on manslaughter. Elba emphasized
that killing of Canaanites living among Jews was strictly forbidden,
except if they were warring against Jews. Elba never advocated killing
non-Jews in the article and never even stated whether he agreed or
disagreed personally with the approach of Maimonides or other commentators
on the questions he was surveying.

But the article was published shortly after the massacre of Arabs in
Hebron by Baruch Goldstein, and the public and the politicians were
looking for a target to prosecute for anti-Arab racism. In April 1995
Rabbi Elba was convicted under the anti-racism law. He was sentenced to
four years' imprisonment (two of the years being a suspended sentence).
The Supreme Court upheld the conviction and the sentence the following
year.

The vagueness of the anti-racism law is also problematic. The law's
language was formulated and thought through so poorly that it would make
statements like "I do not want to date non-Jews," or "I do not like
red-headed women" to be crimes. Should reading certain passages in the
Bible be prohibited because they offend some modern ears? There already
have been demands to cancel Israel's Law of Return (which grants
immigration rights to Jews) as a purported violation of the anti-racism
law.

As another example of its arbitrariness, the law makes advocating
discrimination against a demographic group "racism." But Israel is full of
groups advocating discrimination against Jews as part of "affirmative
action preferences" and, of course, discrimination against males.
Virtually every Arab NGO and political party in the country is on record
in favor of this, as are most groups on the Jewish Left. Such statements
clearly comprise "advocacy of racist discrimination" under the anti-racism
law. And yet not a single person has ever been prosecuted in Israel for
advocating affirmative action discrimination. Why not?

A no less important question is why "racism" should be a crime at all.
Racism is, after all, a belief or a feeling, albeit an evil one. Since
when is it the business of democratic regimes to ferret out what people
feel or believe in the privacy of their hearts? Do we really want a Racism
Patrol inspecting bars and poker games, hunting down individuals making
racist statements on chat boards or in salons?

Criminalizing public expressions of racism in the media is no less
undemocratic. The world is full of statements of poor taste, intolerance,
bigotry, and stupidity, but these are regarded as protected speech in
democratic regimes. Democracy means we all have the right to say stupid
and offensive things. The day offensive speech is prohibited will be the
day democracy is replaced by totalitarian tyranny.

The anti-racism law is not merely an assault on free speech and expression
in Israel, but is itself arguably the most racist law Israel has on its
books. From the start, it was apparent that it would not be used against
any form of racism except that allegedly espoused by the Kahanists. The
prosecutions turned comic and absurd. A Kahanist was indicted and
convicted of racism for selling shirts with the slogan "Where there are no
Arabs there is no terrorism."

In contrast, racism by Arabs or bigotry by Israeli leftists has never been
prosecuted. When a prominent writer with communist ties made comments
justifying Hamas mass murders of Jews, he was not prosecuted as a racist.

Israel's Stalinist political parties, supported mainly by Israel's Arabs,
have never been banned or prosecuted under the anti-racism law, even while
their leaders call for terrorist violence against Jews and for the
destruction of Israel. Israeli professors, artists, and intellectuals
endorsing and justifying Arab terrorism against Jews or declaring Jews to
be not entitled to any form of self-determination have never been
prosecuted. Neither have those making disparaging comments about the
Jewish religion or the Bible.

Israeli Arab students, demonstrators and others chanting pro-violence or
pro-terror slogans, or calling for Israel to be annihilated, have also
been exempt from anti-racism prosecution. Not a single case of indictment
against an Arab anti-Semite or an Israeli Jewish leftist anti-Semite has
taken place since passage of the law.

Arguably the worst form of bigotry inside Israel is anti-Orthodox bigotry.
What makes it so pernicious is the fact that in polite Israeli society it
is often not even regarded is barbarous to denounce Orthodox Jews in the
most horrendous language. The Israeli newspapers and electronic media are
full of people making openly anti-Orthodox disparagements. Not a single
anti-Orthodox bigot has been prosecuted.

But the worst part of the anti-racism law is that it is part and parcel of
a much broader assault against free speech in Israel. It has been used
together with Israeli laws against "incitement" to intimidate political
dissidents. Ever since the Rabin assassination, accusations and
indictments for "incitement" have become common bludgeons used for
partisan purposes against political antagonists in Israel. It would not be
an exaggeration to say that "incitement" has been the label of choice
attached by many Israeli politicians to any statement or expression with
which they happen to disagree.

In most democracies, "incitement" is not a crime at all. At most,
"incitement to perform a crime" is added as an incremental charge against
people indicted for perpetrating the crime itself, in cases where
prosecutors seek a more severe sentence for that same crime. But
prosecutions for "incitement" by itself are virtually non-existent. Even
statements endorsing crime and murder, such as by protesters calling for
political assassination, are protected speech and not crimes, unless they
are part of the actual planning and preparation to carry out real crimes.

While the attempt to criminalize dissidents as "inciters" was largely the
work of the Israeli Labor Party and its allies after the Rabin
assassination, it has been co-opted by the Likud. Over the past year,
there has been a dramatic increase in threats by the Sharon government to
expand the uses of prosecution for "racism" and "incitement" as a means to
suppress the opposition to the Gaza disengagement plan. Those who demanded
that a national referendum be carried out as a pre-condition for
implementing the plan were denounced by some Likud leaders and the media
for "racism and incitement."

Free speech is alive in Israel, but it is wounded and threatened. It is
coming under increasing assault as the internal political divisions in
Israel deepen. Besides prosecution of those utilizing free speech and
saying things of which the political establishment disapproves, there are
growing open threats from the government to use the police, intelligence
services, and "preventive detention" without trial to bully opponents of
government policy into silence.

The very fact that assaults against free speech for "racists" are so
popular in Israel, especially among the chattering classes, illustrates
how shallow, conditional, and dubious is the commitment to democracy by so
many Israelis.

http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Joel%20Amitai%20-%20Londons%20Anti-Israeli%20Academics.htm
(see web page for links)
London's Anti-Israeli Israeli Academics
By Joel Amitai
26/5/2009

London is a fulcrum of anti-Israeli agitation, whether it's boycott
movements, rowdy joint demonstrations by Islamic radicals and leftists
united by their hatred for the Jewish state, or a harshly anti-Israeli
media culture. Unfortunately, London is also where some anti-Israeli
Israeli academics have gone to ply their trade and lend their imprimatur
to the malevolence.

The best-known veteran of the scene is Avi Shlaim, who was born in Baghdad
in 1945, moved to Israel and served in the Israeli army, left Israel at
age twenty-two for studies at Cambridge University, and is now professor
of international relations at Oxford University. Relatively speaking,
Shlaim is more moderate than some of his other ex-Israeli London
compatriots, but he shouldn't exactly be counted among Israel.s friends.
As prominent media watchdog organization CAMERA described him,

Shlaim is one of the so-called 'new historians,' whose stock in trade is
blaming Israel for all the ills of the Middle East, and specifically for
the alleged mass expulsion of Palestinians during the Israeli War of
Independence in 1948-49. Shlaim's particular hobby horse is that Jordan
and Israel colluded to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The tendency of Shlaim and other 'new historians' to fabricate and distort
in the service of their political agenda was most fully exposed in
Professor Efraim Karsh.s Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians..

Daniel Doron, conservative head of the Israel Center for Social and
Economic Justice and a commentator in the Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem
Post, and elsewhere, writes that:

Shlaim 'condemns Zionism by building his case against it beginning with
Israel's 1967 'illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.' The
historian Shlaim omits to mention that murderous Arab attacks on Zionism
preceded 1967 by a century, when no settlements existed, and when Zionism,
even he admits, was a legitimate liberation movement.. Shlaim, who as an
historian ought to know better, helps peddle the big lie of Arab
propaganda about Israel stealing .Palestinian lands...

Or as Israeli left-of-center historian Anita Shapira commented in a review
of Shlaim.s book The Iron Wall:

Deep down, Shlaim really does believe that the Middle East is Arab turf,
and that the Palestinians are innocent victims, and that the Israelis are
outsiders and intruders.. the blame for the misery of the Palestinian
refugees must be shared by several parties. But the morally laden concepts
mustered by Shlaim lay the guilt in no uncertain terms at one door only.at
Israel.s door.

In a 2004 interview with the Palestine Chronicle Weekly Journal (which
notes that the Jerusalem Post called The Iron Wall a .wrecker.s ball aimed
at the Zionist narrative.), Shlaim, after confessing that .I was even a
patriotic Israeli in my youth,. says that:

If you look at Israel.s specific policies on the West Bank.the illegal
Jewish settlements, the brutal military repression of the Arabs, the
abuses of human rights, the habitual disregard for international law, the
building of the so-called .security barrier,. the roads for the exclusive
use of Jewish settlers.all make up a pretty ugly picture. If that is not
apartheid, I don.t know what is.

These, of course, are stock-in-trade claims of Israel-bashers and they can
all be answered: as explained by the late U.S. legal scholar and diplomat
Eugene Rostow, who negotiated UN Security Council Resolution 242 setting
forth the basis for a future peace agreement, the settlements are entirely
legal; the .brutal military repression. consists of measures, like
checkpoints and arrests of terrorists, to prevent mass terror attacks in
Israeli buses, cafes, and malls; the .so-called .security barrier.. is
credited by security professionals with saving hundreds of lives and was
erected only in response to a relentless wave of suicide bombings; the
.Jewish settlers. roads. were constructed solely in response to shooting,
firebombing, and stone-throwing attacks on Israelis living in the
territories, to help them bypass the danger zones, and are also used by
nonsettler Israeli Jews as well as Arabs.

Shlaim is asked later in the interview if he would .like to comment on the
so-called .New Anti-Semitism.?. He remarks: ..it seems to me that among
the most important contributory causes of the new anti-Semitism are the
policies of the Sharon government.. The only .contributing causes. of
anti-Semitism or any other racism are, of course, anti-Semites and
racists. Civilized discourse recognizes no connection between criticism of
governments and bigoted hatred of entire peoples. For Shlaim in his hatred
of his imaginary .apartheid. Israel, that distinction is blurred.

Another of the veterans is Moshe Machover, who left Israel for London in
1968 and is now professor emeritus of philosophy at King.s College London.
Machover is an old-time Maoist. Compared to him, Shlaim is head of the
Pro-Israel League.

Machover.s son Daniel, also London-based, is a lawyer who tried to get
Israeli general Doron Almog arrested in 2005 when he attempted to visit
Britain. Machover p.re, a doctrinaire communist who while still in Israel
in the 1960s helped found the tiny .anticapitalist, anti-Zionist.
organization Matzpen, has signed numerous anti-Israeli petitions including
one by the modestly-named RighteousJews.org (a web site run by a
Holocaust Denier Neo-Nazi):

to commemorate the memory of those Palestinians who have been, and
continue to be depopulated, dispossessed, humiliated, tortured, and
murdered in the name of political Zionism and its quest to create a Jewish
state in the lands between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. From
its founding in 1897 the Zionist endeavors to .pump in. Jews and .pump
out. Palestinians from this land have been the root cause of bloodshed and
conflict..

In a 2006 interview with Socialist Worker, Machover leaves no doubt where
his sympathies lie:

Israel [which withdrew from Lebanon in 2000] has been making incursions
into Lebanon all the time.snatching people sometimes. It has also violated
Lebanese and Syrian airspace and territorial water..

There.s a similar situation in Gaza. Israel withdrew its army and
settlers, but it has been besieging the region and making raids into it.
Two days before Hamas and others captured this Israeli soldier [Gilad
Shalit.held illegally and with no visitation, including by the Red Cross,
since June 2006], Israel abducted two people from Gaza. And of course it
had killed many Gazans by shelling and .targeted. assassination.

Despite this you find a lot of people who say the captures of Israeli
soldiers were gratuitous attacks by Hamas and Hizbollah.they are blamed
for starting it.

Later in the interview, Machover states: .Hamas, Hizbollah, Syria and Iran
are the only forces remaining in the Middle East that are not subservient
to the US and its local junior partners [i.e., like Israel].. As I said,
he makes clear which side he.s on.

As Machover, who has never .progressed. past a Comintern meeting of the
1920s, explains:

The oil and arms industry is making a massive profit out of the Middle
East wars. George Bush and Dick Cheney are linked to these kinds of
companies. Israel is allowed to be strong because it serves the interests
of US capitalism.

Yet Israel, Machover says.something that will come as a surprise to most
Israelis..is not under international pressure. That is why it is so
important to campaign to boycott Israeli goods..

And what about the longer term? .The problem can only be resolved in a
socialist union of the whole region. Marxists have always thought of the
region as a whole. We need to think big.. Yes, and we also need to think
that the glory days of Stalin, the hammer and sickle, and all that are
gone, and it would be best to fill the void with something other than
hatred of Israel and civilization.

Somewhat over a year earlier, Machover made his sympathy for terrorism
more explicit, stating that:

a soldier firing a missile from the safety of a helicopter or a tank into
a densely populated area is not only a war criminal but also a coward. An
officer or politician ordering such acts from the safety of an office is a
war arch-criminal and an arch-coward. But suicide bombing.however
abhorrent.is clearly not a cowardly act. In some limited sense.which in no
way implies moral approval!.it may even be regarded as heroic.

If you don.t see how .heroic. could fail to imply .moral approval,. I have
the same difficulty. No wonder Machover has so much admiration for Hamas
and Hizbollah.

A more recent London migrant is Haim Bresheeth, a filmmaker and film
studies scholar and author of an Introduction to the Holocaust. Until 2002
Bresheeth was dean of the School of Media, Film and Cultural Studies at
Sapir College in Israel; since then he.s been at the University of East
London. Just a few months ago he signed a call to boycott Israel by the
Coalition against Israeli Apartheid.

It.s on Bresheeth.s better days, though, that he sees Israel as .apartheid
plus.. As he wrote in Prospect Magazine in 2007, .The military occupation
of Palestine has turned the West Bank and Gaza into areas where a new and
terrifying sort of apartheid is practiced. As Ronnie Kasrils and Desmond
Tutu said, after their visits to the occupied territories, .What we saw is
worse than what Africans had to endure....

But Bresheeth was feeling charitable to Israel that day. Quoted on a
website of the Jews against Zionism outfit in 2003 (click his name in the
table of contents), Bresheeth says:

Most of my family was destroyed in the holocaust - in different
concentration camps and in the Warsaw ghetto and I was born in a refugee
camp in Italy immediately after the war.... I.m not saying this in order
to elicit some sympathy because this is nonsensical on this audience
[mostly Jewish] obviously. I.m saying this in order to explain why it.s so
easy for me to understand the Palestinians in Gaza and in the rest of
Palestine. It is very easy for me to understand them because they live in
a combination of a concentration camp and Warsaw ghetto for so many years
that we have stopped counting....

Bresheeth.s Israeli Jews, though, are a tricky lot who know how to cover
up their crimes:

They [Israel] will do everything to make you believe that they want
peace.. They will do everything to make sure that people in the West
believe that they want peace - they will go to meetings, they will sign
documents - they will do all that and then they will make damn sure that
there is no chance of any of this happening....

Not surprisingly, in Professor Bresheeth.s view, former prime minister
Ariel Sharon was a crafty Jew who manipulated world leaders at will. As
Bresheeth wrote in Egypt.s Al-Ahram Weekly (scroll down):

Like a ventriloquist dummy speaking the words of its master, we heard the
world.s most powerful man [then-President George W. Bush] reciting a
script written in Jerusalem by one responsible for bathing the Middle East
in blood for decades.. In Sharon.s book, Bush is just another pawn.
Important as he is at the moment, he serves the master plan of ridding
Palestine of its people.. American presidents come and go while Sharon
stands firm for decades, defeating all obstacles in his tireless, barbaric
mission. With the help he now gets from Bush and Blair, he may yet
complete his mission.. The aim here is not to get rid of the resistance to
occupation, but to inflame the situation constantly, until a .final
solution. to the Palestinian .problem. can be initiated.. The next stage
for Sharon is the physical removal of most, if not all, Palestinians from
their homeland.

Apparently Sharon didn.t have enough time to finish his project; some
would note that he did manage to remove some people from their homes,
albeit not Palestinians. Observe, though, where Bresheeth chose to publish
this bile. The 2006 Pew Global Survey reported that: .In the Muslim world,
attitudes toward Jews remain starkly negative, including virtually
unanimous unfavorable ratings of 98% in Jordan and 97% in Egypt. (emphasis
added). Bresheeth.s article couldn.t have made things much better.

In 2007 Bresheeth was back again in Al-Ahram Weekly, this time, as the
article.s blurb put it, to .make the case for a cultural boycott of his
home country.. As Bresheeth stated:

Anyone who strays from the simple line of full support for whatever Israel
chooses to do, however infuriating, is tarred with the brush of
anti-Semitism, used as a magical incantation against heretics outside the
Zionist faith.. While it may be permissible for intellectuals in some
countries to criticise their governments, and it might even be enshrined
within the democratic rights of self-expression and public speech, such a
right apparently does not exist when discussing Israel.

By this time Bresheeth.s readers, appreciative of the profound democratic
rights that Egypt grants them, must have been shaking their heads in
indignation. All the more so as Bresheeth gave them the lowdown on the
Second Lebanon War: ..it fell to the usual suspects, Bush and Blair, to
make sure that the UN did not act against this latest atrocity, and
Israeli troops had a free hand to sow death and destruction without
hindrance...

Bresheeth sounds like he.s nuts, yes; but it doesn.t make him any less
harmful.

Then there.s Yosefa Loshitzky, who until 2002 was at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem and now, like Bresheeth, is at the University of East London
where she.s professor of film, media and cultural studies. Not long ago
she was, along with Machover and Bresheeth, among the .Signatories to a
Statement of Determination to Boycott Israel,. and while still at Hebrew
University she signed a call for an .international force to protect
the.Palestinians from the aggression and repression of the Israeli
occupation..

Last January 5, Loshitzky published on the Electronic Intifada site her
take on Israel.s Operation Cast Lead, launched after over three thousand
rockets had been fired from Gaza at Israeli civilians in 2008 alone.
Loshitzky begins her piece, which she titles .Israel.s Blond Bombshells
and Real Bombs in Gaza,. with the entirely false claim that the Hebrew
name for the operation was meant to connote sadistic aggression toward
Palestinian children.

Loshitzky goes on to assert that Israel.s .murderous and criminal attack
on Gaza. with its .cold, meticulous, and calculated cruelty. marked .not
only a great military victory but also a success story of Israeli hasbara
(meaning in Hebrew, explanation, but practically referring to
misinformation, spin and lies).. Again, entirely false: hasbara means
.making one.s case before public opinion.; although it may imply .spin,.
it does not mean or refer to .misinformation.and lies..

But, as Professor Loshitzky would have it:

Israel.s oiled propaganda-machine was further lubricated by its
self-acknowledged decision to select women as their masbirim
(misinformation spokespersons) so as .to project a feminine and softer
image.. To add some cool glamour to Israel.s hot lies, Tzipi Livni, the
state.s foreign minister and a natural blonde, announced, in response to
calls for truce: .There is no humanitarian crisis in the [Gaza] Strip, and
therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.. The blonde
offensive, led by the rising star of Israeli politics, was fortified by a
team of peroxide blonde Israeli women, whose sex, lies and video games
decorated TV screens worldwide.

Sound like hatred to you? It sure does to me. And Loshitzky adds further:

. we are bombarded by statements and .explanations. given by Israeli
officials and .international experts. who discuss the .situation. calmly
and .logically... They are interviewed in their comfortable (probably
leather-clad) offices. They look and sound like respectable westerners,
just like .us,. and their foreign minister is very calm and cool as her
blonde hair obliges.

That Loshitzky, who grew up in Israel, differentiates between a civilized
Western .us. and those crafty-barbaric Israelis is best left to the
psychotherapists. But lest anyone is taken in by the fa.ade,

We should not forget.that behind this cruel apparatus of sex, lies and
video war games, a more .primitive,. .organic,. and tribal cruelty,
usually well hidden from the scrutiny of the outside world, is operating.
Most people in the west do not realize the indifference, and more
disturbingly, the joy with which Israelis receive news about the suffering
of Arabs and particularly Palestinians..

No, these Israelis are so vile that in the end - again, as for Bresheeth -
only one comparison will suffice:

Israel.s cruelty.should be interpreted in the spirit of Giorgio Agamben.
The influential Italian philosopher argued in relation to the Nazi death
camps that the .correct question to pose concerning the horrors committed
in the camps is, therefore, not the hypocritical one of how crimes of such
atrocity could be committed against human beings. but what were .the
juridical procedures and deployments of power by which human beings could
be so completely deprived of their rights and prerogatives that no act
committed against them could appear any longer as a crime..

We may well ask the same question today when listening to Israel.s blonde
bombshells explain the bombs tearing apart the people of Gaza.

Suggest to people of Loshitzky.s ilk that there might be some anti-Semitic
feelings lurking behind their perorations, and they.ll take umbrage and
say you.re part of the Jewish phalanx that.s out to silence them.
Regarding Loshitzky.s loathsome Israelis, though, one might say that if
anti-Semitism didn.t exist, it would need to be invented.

Does it matter what these crackpots say, write, and do? Unfortunately, it
does. As token but conspicuous Israeli and Jews who have themselves .seen
the light. and spread lies and incitement against their native society,
they reinforce the malicious, poison the ignorant, and augment the
well-documented anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic tide in Europe and other
places. Know who they are and beware.

Joel Amitai is an independent researcher and filmmaker. Reach him at
jamitai40@gmail.com.

2. Check out the latest Neo-Nazi hatred being disseminated via the
University of Haifa computers on the "ALEF" list - for details go here:
http://isracampus.org.il/ALEF%20Watch.htm

1. I would hereby like to nominate Professor Carlo Strenger, from the
department of psychology at Tel Aviv University, for the Philistine of the
Year Award.

Strenger is a far-leftist hater of Israel and Zionism who regularly
explains to Haaretz readers why Israel is a horrible state unworthy of
existence, but the Hamas is really misunderstood. (A collection of
Strengerisms may be read here:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=003938713500856905333%3Aghdjn7wl9zu&ie=UTF-8&q=strenger
) But today Strenger goes beyond that to support hooligan violence
against Orthodox Jews! Really!

The background to this is the continuing campaign of intimidation and
violence by ultra-secularists in Ramat Aviv, where Strenger lives and
where his Tel Aviv University is located, against Orthodox Jews. The
ultra-secularists claim there is a cabal by the Orthodox to "take over"
the neighborhood. You know, like the Elders of Zion.

Anti-religious bigotry is the main form of bigotry in Israel.
Strenger and his anti-Orthodox stormtrooper buddies are no doubt the very
first to take to the barricades to support the right of Arabs to move into
Jewish towns and communities in Carmiel and elsewhere. But they insist
they have the right to "defend liberalism," to use Strenger's words, and
use violence to keep the Orthodox out of Ramat Aviv.

Strenger's version of Der Sturmer appears in Haaretz this morning at
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1087998.html . Notice the title:
"Liberalism has the right to defend itself." That is so Orwellian that I
really cannot think of a way to mock it. Defend liberalism by beating up
Orthodox Jews who move into your neighborhood! You have the right to
harass the Orthodox if you invent a claim that the Orthodox harass the
secularists! (How? By saying Shabbat Shalom to them?)

Here are some selections from Strenger's Haaretz rant:

'Imagine seeing the following story in the news: "A Haredi neighborhood
has been flooded by requests from secular Jews to rent and buy apartments.
They have opened bars in the neighborhood as well as an Agudat Hillel
office, which offers assistance and advice to Haredi youths who want to
become secular. The Haredim have started to counterattack; they have
launched a Web site encouraging Haredim not to rent apartments to
seculars, and are warning that the neighborhood's religious value and way
of life is in danger.".
'The story in Ramat Aviv happens to be the other way around: Secular Jews
are organizing to defend their lifestyle against a Haredi influx..The
answer is very simple: from Safed to Beit Shemesh, from Ramot Eshkol in
Jerusalem to Arad, the story has repeated itself: Haredim begin by renting
or buying apartments, and once they reach a critical mass, they make life
for the remaining secular Jews impossible through pressure, harassment and
even threats. This is not a paranoid leftist nightmare, but a matter of
historical fact. So is the Haredi belief that, in the long run, they will
take over the country..
'Many liberals confuse this with the mistaken idea that liberalism cannot
and must not defend itself, its values and its lifestyle. The result is
that liberals often try to appease those who attack it rather than
exercising self defense. The ideology of political correctness that says
liberals must respect other groups' feelings, but that other groups can
attack and vilify liberalism, is extreme.'

So Strenger thinks that liberalism means that self-proclaimed
liberals have the right to harass and use violence against those with whom
they disagree, all in the name of "self-defense of liberalism.' I
wonder what he would make of an article claiming that conservatives have
the right to bash him over the head with a baseball bat, all in the name
of defending conservatism? How about the right of Zionists to exercise
defense of tolerance and dignity by stringing up anti-Israel self-hating
leftist tenured traitors from lamp posts?

Meanwhile, Strenger is not the only secularist yahoo promoting
violence, hooliganism, and thuggery against the Orthodox. You may recall
an earlier posting here about parents at a school in Jerusalem calling in
the police to arrest a woman handing out Sabbath candles to students
outside a secular school on a Friday. Had she been handing out crystal
meth and ecstasy, the parents would have had no problems with it.

Then there was the story earlier this week of the principal at a
secular Tel Aviv high school suspending a student because he influenced
his student friends to come to school wearing a yarmulke. For an update
on that, go here:
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/05/philistines-in-herzliya.html
Had the student in question influences his friends to smoke dope in
school, the principal would no doubt have raised no objections to it!

Want to tell the officers of Tel Aviv University what you think of
Strenger endorsing anti-Orthodox bigotry and violence? Contact:
President, Professor Zvi Galil
Email spiegelr@post.tau.ac.il
zg1@post.tau.ac.il
and galil@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University
P.O. Box 39040
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL
Fax: 972-3-6422379 and 972-3-642-2752

Rector: Prof. Dany Leviatan
Email: leviatan@post.tau.ac.il
and rector@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University
P.O. Box 39040
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL
American Friends Offices of Tel Aviv University:
http://www.tauac.org/site/PageServer?pagename=contact_us and
http://www.tauac.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_tau
Other

2. As you know, Israel's Jews for a Second Holocaust have been
promoting the idea that Israel's very existence is a catastrophe or
"Nakba" in Arabic.

Now Ben Dror Yemini, the new Editor in Chief at Maariv, takes on the
self-hating Left and its amen choir and dispells their claims. The
folloing is a bit long but definitely worth wading through and using:

*The Jewish Nakba ***
by Ben Dror Yemini
*Expulsions, Massacres and Forced Conversions*

Originally published in Hebrew, in
MAARIV<http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/891/209.html>

*Each year, the Palestinians mark Nakba Day, the catastrophe that befell
them with the establishment of the State of Israel. But the Jews in Arab
countries also suffered catastrophe and it was many times worse.*

* *

*Ben-Dror Yemini <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Dror_Yemini> *

*They say that she was stunningly beautiful. Sol (Suleika)
Hatuel<http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/009518.shtml>was 17
years old when she was beheaded. A Muslim friend claimed that she had
succeeded in converting her. When Sol denied to the claim, she was accused
of renouncing Islam and was condemned to death. Her case reached the
sultan.
*

* *

*In order to prevent her death, the community elders tried to persuade her
to live as a Muslim. She refused and said**, "I was born as a Jew, I will
die as a Jew." Her fate was sealed. It happened in 1834. She was from
Tangier and was executed in Fez. Many make pilgrimages to her grave.
Despite
the fact that the incident was immortalized in eyewitness testimony, in a
famous painting and in a play, her story has been forgotten. The following
article is dedicated to her and to the victims of the Jewish Nakba.***

Every year on the 15th of May, the Palestinians - and many others around
the
world along with them - "celebrate" Nakba Day. For them, this is the day
that marks the great catastrophe that befell them as result of the
establishment of the State of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs
became
refugees. Some fled, some were deported. The Nakba grew to such enormous
proportions that it is preventing a solution to the dispute.

We must remember that in the 1940s, population exchanges and deportations
for the purpose of creating national states were the accepted norm. Tens
of
millions of people experienced
it<http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/009518.shtml>,
but only the Palestinians (and they are not alone in this) have been
inflating the myth of the Nakba.

However, there is another Nakba: the Jewish Nakba. During those same
years,
there was a long line of slaughters, pogroms, property confiscation of and
deportations - against Jews in Islamic countries. This chapter of history
has been left in the shadows. The Jewish Nakba was worse than the
Palestinian Nakba. The only difference is that the Jews did not turn that
Nakba into their founding ethos. To the contrary.

Like tens of millions of other refugees around the world, they preferred
to
heal the wound. Not to scratch it and not to open it and not to make it
bleed even more. The Palestinians, in contrast, preferred bleeding to
rehabilitation. And now they are also paying the price.

The industry of lies has intensified the myth of the Nakba and turned it
into the ultimate crime. The Nakba has spawned innumerable publications
and
conferences, to the point of completely distorting the actual historical
process. The Deir Yassin massacre has become one of the milestones in the
Palestinian Nakba. There is no need to hide what occurred there (even
though
the issue of the massacre is in dispute). Innocent people were killed.
There
were a few other instances of behavior that should be exposed and
condemned.

War of Extermination against the Jews

A long series of massacres was perpetrated against the Jews in Arab
countries. They did not declare war on the countries in which they lived.
They were loyal citizens. That did not help them. Their suffering was
erased. Their story is never told. The Palestinian narrative has taken
over
history. There is no need for a Palestinian narrative versus a Zionist
narrative. We need to shake off narratives in favor of the truth. And the
truth is the number of Jews murdered was greater, their dispossession was
greater, and their suffering greater..

A stunning testimonial from those years, which actually comes from the
Arab
side, sheds light on the issue. In 1936, Alawite notables sent a letter to
the French Foreign Minister in which they expressed their concern for the
future of the region. They also referred to the Jewish question: "*The
Jews
brought civilization and peace to the Arab Muslims, and they dispersed
gold
and prosperity over Palestine without damage to anyone or taking anything
by
force. Despite this, the Muslims declared holy war against them and did
not
hesitate to massacre their children and women ... Thus, a black fate
awaits
the Jews in case the Mandates are cancelled and Muslim Syria united with
Muslim Palestine*". The interesting thing is that one of the letter's
signatories was none other than the great grandfather of Bashar Al Assad,
the president of Syria.

We must remember that Nakba Day is the date of the declaration of Israel's
independence, May 15th . We must remember what happened just a few hours
after that declaration. The Secretary of the Arab League, *Abdul Rahman
Hassan Azzam*aha, announced the declaration of
war<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Rahman_Hassan_Azzam>against
Israel: "This war will be a war of annihilation and the story of the
slaughter will be told like the campaigns of the Mongols and the
Crusaders."

The Mufti, Haj Amin Al Husseini, who was close to Hitler during the Second
World War, added his own bit: " I am declaring a holy war. My brother
Muslims! Slaughter the Jews! Kill them all!" The mini-Holocaust of the
Jews
in Arab countries.

Various documents, some of them discovered only in recent years, show that
the declaration of war was far broader. It was actually a declaration of
war
on the Jews.

Research <http://www.justiceforjews.com/jjac.pdf> that was conducted,
among
others, by Prof. Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice of Canada, shows
that the Arab League formulated a bill that would place a series of
sanctions on the Jews, including confiscation of property, bank accounts
and
more. The preamble to the bill states that "All Jews will be considered
members of the Jewish minority in the State of Palestine." And if the fate
of the Jews of Palestine was sealed, the fate of the Jews in Arab
countries
was clear.

The bill was indeed the background to the sanctions against the Jews in
Arab
countries - sometimes by way of legislation, as happened in Iraq and later
in Egypt, and sometimes by taking those measures without the need for any
legislation. According to the industry of lies, the Jews in Arab countries
lived peacefully in their environment, under the protection of the
government, and it was only because of the Zionist movement and the harm
done to the Arabs in Palestine that the Jews began to suffer.

This lie has been repeated innumerable times. Most of the Jews in Arab
countries did not undergo the horrors of the Holocaust. But, even before
the
advent of Zionism, their situation was not anybetter. There were periods
in
which the Jews enjoyed relative peace under Muslim rule, but those periods
were the exceptions. Throughout Jewish history in Muslim lands there were
humiliations, expulsions, pogroms and a systematic deprivation of rights.

Series of Pogroms

We can, of course, start with the conflict between Muhammad and the Jews.
Muhammed undertook social reforms, bringing the Arabs out of the Jahaliya
period, and borrowed the concept of monotheism - primarily, perhaps, from
the Jews. Many motifs from the Jewish religion appear in the Koran, for
example, circumcision and the prohibition on eating pork. But Muhammad
wanted to convert the Jews, They, of course, refused. The result was a
confrontation that ended in the expulsion and slaughter of hundreds.

The Jews, as the "People of the Book," were given the right to live under
the protection of Islam and to practice their religion. From time to time,
from generation to generation, the conditions underwent changes. In many
cases, the Jews lived under the covenant of Khalif
Omar<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pact_of_Omar>
.

This covenant enabled them to live as protected people ("*Dhimmis*"),
albeit
with inferior status. But many times, under Muslim rule, they were not
even
allowed a life of inferior status.

*The Golden Age: *One of the proofs of the coexistence of Jews and Muslims
is Jewish prosperity under Muslim rule in Spain and the Golden Age. The
reality, however, was different.

It encompassed a series of
violence<http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=701916b5-4f75-4a2b-8fa2-535badfb4ffe>against
the Jews. In 1011 in Cordoba, Spain, under Muslim rule, there were
pogroms in which, according to various estimates, from hundreds to
thousands
were murdered. In 1066 in Granada, Yosef Hanagid was executed, along with
between 4,000 and 6,000 other Jews. One of the worst periods of all began
in
1148, when the Almohad dynasty came to power (al Muwahhid.n), and ruled
Spain and North Africa during the 12th and 13th centuries.

*Morocco:* The country that suffered from the worst series of
massacres<http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/pogrom.htm>.
In the 8th century whole communities were wiped out by Idris the First. In
1033, in the city of Fez, 6,000 Jews were murdered by a Muslim mob. The
rise
of the Almohad dynasty caused waves of mass murders. According to
testimony
from that time, 100,000 Jews were slaughtered in Fez and about 120,000 in
Marrakesh (this testimony should be viewed with caution). In 1465, another
massacre took place in Fez, which spread to other cities in Morocco.

There were pogroms in Tetuan in 1790 and 1792, in which children were
murdered, women were raped and property was looted. Between 1864 and 1880,
there were a series of pogroms against the Jews of Marrakesh, in which
hundreds were slaughtered. In 1903, there were pogroms in two cities -
Taza
and Settat, in which over 40 Jews were killed.

In 1907, there was a pogrom in Casablanca in which 30 Jews were killed and
many women were raped. In 1912, there was another massacre in Fez in which
60 Jews were killed and about 10,000 were left homeless. In 1948, another
series of pogroms began against the Jews which led to the slaughter of 42
in
the cities of Oujda and Jrada.

*Algeria:* A series of
massacres<http://books.google.com/books?id=Tdn6FFZklkcC&pg=RA1-PA9&lpg=RA1-PA9&dq=algeria+jews+pogrom&source=bl&ots=qJZnz9wEYM&sig=dMbedZCt0eDZ4OpJ_UutBOy_XE4&hl=iw&ei=logGSoidJZqQjAeln8z0BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#PRA1-PA10,M1>occurred
in 1805, 1815 and 1830. The situation of the Jews improved with the
start of the French conquest in 1830, but that did nor prevent anti-Jewish
outbursts in the 1880s. The situation deteriorated again with the rise of
the Vichy government. Even before 1934, the country was permeated by Nazi
influences, which led to the slaughter of 25 Jews in the city of
Constantine. When it achieved independence in 1962, laws were passed
against
citizenship for anyone who was not a Muslim and their property was
effectively confiscated. Most of the Jews left, usually completely
penniless, together with the French ("pieds noirs").

*Libya:* In 1785, hundreds of Jews were murdered by Burza Pasha. Under
Nazi
influence, harassment of the Jews intensified. Jewish property in
Benghazi
was plundered, thousands were sent to camps and about 500 Jews were
killed.
In 1945, at the end of World War II, a program against the Jews began and
the number of murdered reached 140. The New York Times reported the
horrible
scenes of babies and old people who had been beaten to death. In the riots
that broke out in 1948, the Jews were more prepared, so only 14 were
killed.
Following the Six Day War, riots broke out once again and 17 Jews were
slaughtered.

*Iraq:* a massacre occurred in Basra in 1776. The situation of the Jews
improved under British rule in 1917, but this improvement ended with
Iraq's
independence in 1932. German influences increased and reached a peak in
1941
in the pogrom known as Farhud, in which 182 Jews were slaughtered
(according
to historian Elie
Kedourie<http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/recognition_for_the_silent_jew.html>,
600 people were actually murdered) and thousands of houses were pillaged.

Those were the days of Haj Amin al Husseini, who preached violence against
the Jews. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Iraqi
parliament acted according to the Arab League bill and in 1950 and froze
the
assets of Jews. Sanctions were imposed on those who remained in Iraq. The
Farhud massacre and the harassment from 1946 to 1949 to all intents and
purposes turned the Iraqi Jews into exiles and refugees. The few thousand
who remained in Iraq suffered from harsh edicts. In 1967, 14 Iraqis were
sentenced to death on trumped up charges of espionage. Among them were 11
Jews. Radio Iraq invited the masses to the hanging festivities.

*Syria: *The first blood libel in a Muslim country occurred in 1840, and
led
to the kidnapping and torture of dozens of Jewish children, sometimes to
the
point of death, and a pogrom against the Jews. In 1986, the Syrian
Minister
of Defense, Mustafa Talas, published a book, "The Matzah of Zion," in
which
he claims that the Jews did, indeed, use the blood of a Christian monk to
bake matzah. Same old anti-Semitism, new edition. Other pogroms occurred
in Aleppo in 1850 and in 1875, in Damascus in 1848 and in 1890, in Beirut
in
1862 and in 1874, and in Dir al Kamar there was another blood libel which
also led to a pogrom in 1847. That year, there was a pogrom against the
Jews
of Jerusalem, which was the result of that blood libel. In 1945, the Jews
of
Aleppo suffered severe pogroms. 75 Jews were murdered and the community
was
destroyed. There was a resurgence of the violence in 1947, which turned
most
of the Syrian Jews into refugees. Those who remained there lived for many
years as hostages.

* *

*Iran: *There was a pogrom against the Jews of Mashhad in 1839. A mob was
incited to attack Jews, and slaughtered almost 40. The rest were forced to
convert. That is how the Marranos of Mashhad came into being. In 1910,
there
was a blood libel in Shiraz in which 30 Jews were murdered and all Jewish
homes were pillaged.

*Yemen: *There were fluctuations in relations that ranged between
tolerance
and inferior subsistence, between harassment and pogroms. The Rambam's
Letter to Yemen was sent following a letter he received from the leader of
the Yemeni Jews, describing edicts of forced conversion issued against the
Jews (1173). There were further waves of apostasy edicts which cannot be
detailed here for lack of space.

One of the worst milestones was the Mawza
exile<http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=3427104C6A464847E7DD1659FD3B4EB2.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=332917>.
Three years after Imam Al Mahdi took power in 1676, he drove the Jews into
one of the most arid districts of Yemen. According to various accounts, 60
-
75% of the Jews died as a result of the exile. Many and varied edicts were
imposed on the Jews, differing only in severity. One of the harshest was
the
Orphans' Edict, which ordered the forced conversion of orphaned children
to
Islam. In nearby Aden, which was under British rule, pogroms occurred in
1947 which took the lives of 82 Jews. 106 of the 170 shops that were owned
by Jews were completely destroyed. Hundreds of houses and all the
community's buildings were burned down.

*Egypt: *As in the other Arab countries, the Jews of Egypt also suffered
inferior status for hundreds of years. A significant improvement occurred
when Muhammad Ali came to power in 1805. The testimony of French diplomat,
Edmond Combes, leaves nothing in doubt: "*To the Muslims, no race is more
worthy of contempt than the Jewish race." Another diplomat added, "The
Muslims do not hate any other religion the way they hate that of the
Jews*."

Following the blood libel in Damascus, similar libels began to spread in
Egypt as well and incited mobs to carry out a series of attacks: in Cairo
in
1844, 1890, and in 1901-1902; and Alexandria in 1870, 1882 and in
1901-1907.
Similar attacks also occurred in Port Said and in Damanhur.

Later on, there were riots against the Jews at the end of World War II, in
1945, in which 10 were killed and hundreds were injured. In 1947, the
Companies Law was passed, which severely damaged Jewish businesses and led
to the confiscation of property. In 1948, following the UN resolution on
partition, riots began in Cairo and Alexandria. The dead numbered between
80
and 180. Tens of thousands were forced to leave, many fleeing and
abandoning
their property. The lot of those who remained did not improve. In 1956, a
law was passed in Egypt which effectively denied the Jews citizenship,
forcing them to leave the country with no property. This was an act of
pure
expulsion and mass property confiscation.

***

The above is just a partial list out of a long series of massacres in
Muslim
countries. It happened before the Zionist endeavor. It continued with the
Zionist endeavor. We are talking about a succession of events. Tens of
thousands were murdered simply because they were Jewish. So the fairytale
of
coexistence and blaming Zionism for undermining that coexistence is yet
another completely baseless myth.

Before the UN vote on partition in November 1947, Egypt's ambassador to
the
UN, Heykal Pasha,
warned<http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/recognition_for_the_silent_jew.html>that
"
*The lives of a million Jews in Muslim countries will be in danger if the
vote is for partition... if Arab blood is spilled in Palestine, Jewish
blood
will be spilled elsewhere in the world*."

Four days afterwards, the Iraqi foreign minister, Muhammad Fadil al
Jamali<http://www.meforum.org/263/why-jews-fled-the-arab-countries>said
that "
*We will not be able to restrain the masses in the Arab countries, after
the
harmony in which Jews and Arabs lived together*." There was no harmony.
There had been a massacre of Jews just a few years earlier. El Jamali
lied,
of course. The very same Iraqi government had encouraged the harassment of
Jews and issued orders to confiscate all Jewish property.

Additionally, the Iraqi leader of the time, Nuri Said, had already
presented
a plan for expelling the Jews in
1949<http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2005/05/origins-of-exchange-of-populations.html>,
even before the hasty - actually forced - exit of the Jews from Iraq. He
also explained that "The Jews are a source of trouble in Iraq. They have
no
place among us. We must get rid of them as best we were able." Said even
presented a plan to lead the Jews via Jordan in order to coerce them into
passage to Israel. Jordan objected, but the expulsion was implemented
anyway. Said even admitted that this entailed a type of population
exchange.

So the massacres, the pogroms and the great expulsion of the Jews was a
continuation of their suffering under Muslim rule. There have always been
Muslims who came out in defense of the Jews. They are also worthy of
mention. That were also periods of prosperity, but it appears that most of
the Jewish prosperity, as in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s, in Algeria in
the
19th and 20th centuries, in Iraq in the 1920s - was under colonial rule.
In
most cases, the situation of the Jews was bad before the European invasion
and worsened once again with the end of the colonial era.

* * *

Throughout the relations between Jews and Arabs, in Arab countries or in
the
course of the Zionist enterprise, there was not one case of a pogrom
against
Muslims of the type committed by the Arabs against the Jews. Even in the
worst cases, which must be condemned, such as Deir Yassin, they occurred
as
part of a military confrontation.

Those are cases that should be condemned, but we need to put things in
perspective. The Arabs slaughtered the Jews without any hostilities and
without any military excuse, just because they were Jews. And those few
Arabs who were killed, were killed as part of a military campaign. Despite
this, any injury inflicted on the Arab population resulted in innumerable
investigations and references. The worst abuse of all, the abuse of Jews
by
Arabs, was erased and forgotten.

Let's return to Deir Yassin, the ultimate symbol of the Nakba. We have
called it an indecent act and we will repeat that. But we must note that
it
was preceded by a series of murderous terrorist attacks against the
civilian
population. Waves of incidents, which to all intents and purposes were
actual pogroms, by an incited mob that attacked the civilian population.
Thousands of Jews were slaughtered - women, children and the elderly. The
Palestinians even murdered their own people. In the great Arab Revolt in
the
1930s, 400 Jews and 5,000 Arabs were killed, most of them at the hands of
their brethren.

The months before Deir Yassin were the worst of all. 39 workers were
murdered at the Haifa refineries, 50 Jews were killed by car bombs in
Jerusalem, and on and on. In total, in the four months between the vote on
partition and the declaration of establishment of the State of Israel, 815
Jews were murdered, most of them before the Deir Yassin incident (on
April
9, 1948), some afterwards (the slaughter of the Hadassah hospital convoy,
79
killed, April 13, 1948). Most were civilians. Most died in massacres and
terrorist attacks. And that is the real background. Far more murdered
Jews.
But they have all been forgotten. They should be mentioned. That is the
Jewish Nakba, whose victims, in Israel and around the world, are mentioned
less and less.

*The Palestinians paid the price*

Close to a million Jews lived in Arab countries at the time of the
establishment of the State of Israel. Just a few live there today. Most
left
because they suffered from pogroms and the threat to their lives. It was a
crueler expulsion than the one suffered by the Arabs of Palestine, who
paid
the price for the declarations of war and annihilation made by their
leaders. Even the Jewish property that was confiscated or abandoned as a
result of the expulsion is more valuable than the Arab property that
remained in Israel.

Various investigators have tried to estimate the value of the confiscated
Jewish property following the forced departure of the Jews from Arab
countries, compared with the Arab property left in Israel following the
forced departure of the Arabs. Economist Sidney
Zabludoff<http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMID=111&LNGID=1&FID=388&PID=0&IID=2196>,
an international expert in the field, estimates that the value of the Arab
property is $3.9 billion, compared with the value of the Jewish property
which is $6 billion (at 2007 values).

So even in this area, the Palestinians' claims are refuted. They dragged
the
Arab countries into war. They paid the price. And they are the ones who
caused the Jews to pay an even higher price. Both in property and in
blood.

This article is not intended to cultivate the Jewish Nakba, and it by no
means includes all the cases of pogroms, property confiscations, forced
conversions and other harassment. The purpose is precisely the opposite.
When they understand, in the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians
in
particular, that suffering, expulsion, loss of property, the cost in
lives,
is not the monopoly of one side, they may, perhaps, have the sense to
understand that this past is a matter for history lessons. Because if we
start to perform a political accounting, they have an overdraft. The
Jewish
Nakba was far greater. The suffering was enormous. But it is the suffering
of many nations, Jews and Arabs among them, who went through the
experience
as part of the creation of new nation states.

It is therefore worth presenting the story of the Jewish Nakba. Not for
the
purpose of increasing the hostility, but for the purpose of presenting the
truth, and for the purpose of reconciliation between the nations.
Inshallah.

--
Ben-Dror Yemini
Skype: bdy222
Gmail talk: bdyemini
Tel: 00-972-52-3112227
Links to translated articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Dror_Yemini

1. Gyno-Terror

The International Women's Commission is yet another of those
bash-Israel NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that pretend to be
pursuing peace neutrally, whereas in reality they are promoting the agenda
of Palestinian genocidal terrorists. It is different from the countless
other groups because it consists of women. Naturally, it wants to achieve
a peace that involves creation of a new state of "Palestine" and naturally
it refuses to acknowledge any right at all by Israel to defend its own
civilians from Islamofascist barbarism and Palestinian terror, not even
its right to protect Israeli women. Its "narrative" of the Arab-Israeli
conflict can be read here . http://www.iwc-peace.org/ - and is identical
to that of the Hamas, except when it comes to proclamations about how
important and nice women are.

What is noteworthy is what took place at a recent mahjong klatch of
these gyno-racists. Even more significant is the fact that the goings on
there were exposed and implicitly criticized by none other than Akiva
Eldar in Haaretz on May 12, 2009. Eldar is a far-leftist anti-Israel
fanatic and the only good thing ordinarily that can be said about him is
that he is less openly anti-Semitic and less openly advocating Israel's
annihilation than his two Haaretz colleagues: Gideon Levy and Amira Hass.
(Unrelated to this story here, even Gideon Levy had a rare nanosecond of
coherence and sanity a couple of weeks ago when he ran a column attacking
the yahoos and louts of Ramat Aviv for their bigotry and violence against
the Orthodox Jews living and moving into Ramat Aviv!)

The story that is of interest here is this. On international women's
day, the IWC held a convocation of its gyno-terrorists and their
fellowette travelers. The main topic was Israel's recent "Cast Lead"
campaign against Hamas terrorism in the Gaza Strip. The "steering
committee" to discuss the Gaza events included as members Prof. Galia
Golan, a founder of Peace Now, a radical leftist, and a faculty member at
the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in "government" . see her web page
here:
http://www.idc.ac.il/eng/faculty/details.asp?sid=7930&letter=G&school=&displayStatus=
(the IDC is Israel's private-sector university).

Also on the committee was Naomi Chazan, a retired prof from the
Hebrew University (also political science) and a one-time Knesset
backbencher from Meretz. Chazan spoke in Ben Gurion University's rally
against academic freedom last week, organized by the politics department
there, where she denounced people who dare to criticize anti-Israel
"academic" fanatics. Denouncing Israel as a Nazi apartheid terrorist
entity is fine, she insisted, but criticizing the people who DO that is
McCarthyism and must be censored! A few other Israeli ultra-leftist
feminizts also participated. Most of the Israeli contingent willingly
signed the conference's proclamation asserting that Israel had just
carried out massacres in Gaza and calling for the international community
to crack down on Israeli sovereignty and its exercise of its right of
defense.

But all was not peaceful and unified in the IWC's Nuremberg Rally
against Jews. A bit to my own surprise, Collette Avital, a Labor Party
politician and ex-Knesset Member (she ran in the last election but was too
far down on the Labor slate to get a seat), refused to sign! She
protested the fact that the IWC Declaration was one-sided and that it
never even bothered to mention that Israel's operations were in response
to years of Hamas rocket attacks and other forms of terror. Collette has
her own track record of silliness, such as getting hysterical over
magazine ads of women in bathing suits. But the naked anti-Semitism of
the IWC was too much for her. She was joined by an ex-Knesset Member from
the Shinui party, Etti Livni, who also expressed her disgust at the bias.

The Palestinian women who had been sent by their menfolk to the IWC to
sit and smile and mouth anti-Israel slogans announced that they would not
sit with any Israeli feminists who justified Israel's exercising
self-defense. Golan and Chazan tried to nag the Israeli dissidents into
abandoning their position that any IWC statement should denounce ALL acts
of violence, even those directed against Jews. But Avital and Livni
refused to capitulate to the gyno-terror. Avital resigned and walked out,
while Livni stayed in to try to argue from within.

The rest of the Israeli delegation supported the one-sided
denunciation of Israel and the endorsement of the "right" of the
Palestinians to murder Jews. The Islamists of Hamas and the Taliban
continue to serve as their role models of feminist liberation and
enlightenment.

2. Speaking of Philistinism north of Tel Aviv, Makor Rishon May 22, 2009
had an interesting news story about bigotry and intolerance in the wealthy
Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya. It seems that one student at the secularist
elite high school, the Herzliya Gymnasium, upset the local powers that be
and offended their delicate sensitivities by showing up at school wearing
a yarmulke, a kipa. Even worse, he convinced some of his friends also to
wear a kipa during class.

This was an intolerable provocation, insisted the principal of the
school. He suspended the felon in question for wearing his yarmulke.
After all, Israel is a pluralistic democracy and so such things cannot be
tolerated with equanimity! In response, the fiend's pals threatened to
come to school the next week actually wearing tefillin.

We are trying to find out if the principal plans to arm the staff with
automatic rifles and stun grenades to protect his school building from
infiltration by students wearing yarmulkes..

Uri Avnery is quite literally the godfather of Israeli anti-Zionism and
anti-Semitism. Long before "Post-Zionism" became the pagan theology of
Israel's radical Left, Avnery was calling for an end to Zionism and to
Israel in his book "Israel without Zionists," crayoned and published by
him in the late 1960s. At the time, Avnery was the publisher of the
semi-pornographic scandal sheet "Haolam Hazeh," Israel's answer to
National Enquirer in the US. Avnery ran for Knesset and got voted in
briefly on a protest vote by the same sorts of people who might vote for
Alfred E. Neuman or for Homer Simpson in other places. He was
dishonorably involved in the complex matters surrounding the Kastner court
case and controversy in Israel.

And since the early 1970s he has been working full time for Israel's
annihilation. He is a frequent writer for numerous anti-Semitic and
pro-jihad pro-terror web sites, most frequently for "Counterpunch," the
neo-Stalinist web site run by arch anti-Semite Alexander Cockburn, the guy
who claims the Jews were behind the 911 attacks on the US and also behind
the anthrax attacks in the US.

Avnery is the poster boy for the Israeli far Left. He epitomizes
everything that is pathological about it. He is incredibly self-hating.
Unlike the other lefties, he admits he seeks for Israel to end all
connections with Judaism and for Israelis to stop being Jews.

He serves as Israel's Lord Haw-Haw (Haw-Haw was the British propagandist
who spent World War II broadcasting pro-Nazi propaganda over the radio in
English from Berlin).
Naturally he is beloved by anti-Semites all over the globe and frequently
honored.

Avnery runs a splinter extremist anti-Israel "protest group" called Gush
Shalom, funded by the usual haters of Israel from Europe and elsewhere.
He often tours outside Israel as the speaker sponsored by Islamofascist
organizations.

Uri Avnery was disowned by his own mother, who regarded him as a traitor.
He repeatedly served as human shield for Yassir Arafat and other
terrorists. At least one Israeli senior military officer called for
Avnery to be shot as a traitor, as have some rightist hotheads like Baruch
Marzel. He was beaten up and had both arms broken due to his treasonous
writings as early as 1953. He claims that in 1975 someone tried to
assassinate him, but I suspect this is nothing more than grandstanding and
posturing to get himself publicity.

We earlier had occasion to comment on Avnery's Nazi ties and affections
from when he was a youth in Germany. What we now know is that his ties
with Nazis and even with Holocaust Deniers are not forgotten indiscretions
of youth but are evident for us all now, even this week!

The Rense.com web site is a Holocaust Denial and Neo-Nazi web site run by
a radio shlock broadcaster named Jeff Rense. Unlike Michael Savage, he is
not banned from Britain for being a racist. Rense's web site is
overflowing with articles about how the Holocaust is a hoax invented by
the Zionists, and that no Jews were murdered at Auschwitz. If you think I
am exaggerating, go into Rense.com and do a search on their search engine
for the words "Holocaust" or "Auschwitz."

Rense is so openly Nazi and so whacky (it also promotes "theories" about
UFOs) that even the most openly anti-Semitic Jews usually stand clear of
it. Even people like Neve Gordon, whose articles appear on other
Holocaust Denial and Neo-Nazi web sites, has never gone near Rense. The
only exception to this is Barry Chamish, who is a regular columnist for
Rense.com, but he is so deranged that his appearance on the site probably
just helps to discredit it.

There are some anti-Semites and Holocaust Deniers who DO write for Rense
and who also appear on leftist anti-Semitic web sites like Counterpunch.
Alexander Cockburn does not seem to mind sharing some of his stable of
writers with Rense (including Holocaust deniers like John Chuckman, Henry
Makow, and Paul Craig Roberts, and leftist Neo-Nazis like Stephen
Lendman).

Well, to get to the point, this week Uri Avnery is publishing one of his
countless bash-Israel screeds on Rense.com. It can be read at
http://www.rense.com/general85/oaos.htm . You better open it, or else I
fear you will think I am spoofing you again.

Moreover, this is not Avnery's first appearance there. If you go to
Rense.com and write Avnery's name in the search engine, you will see
dozens of other pieces by Avnery published on this Holocaust Denial web
site. Obviously Avnery is not bothered by this. If the publications were
without his approval he could sue Rense and its sponsors to force them to
be removed, or just publicly repudiate Rense. While you are in the
search engine, look up Holocaust or Auschwitz. My favorite Rense item on
the Holocaust is this: www.rense.com/general62/meth.htm. You will find
Chamish listed among the official site columnists on the front page of
Rense.com .

To remind you of Avnery's personal history and connections with German
Nazism:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/2029

The leading survivor of the early "Canaanite" (Israeli anti-Jewish)
movement today is Uri Avnery, a fanatic anti-Zionist and anti-Semite,
whose Bash-Israel pro-Hamas articles appear everywhere one can find
anti-Semitism, on the Right and the Left.
What is not well known is that Uri Avnery's original name was Helmut
Osterman, born in Germany, and among the two leading figures in the
"Canaanites"; and Avnery/Osterman was an admirer of Nazism.

In 1941, Avnery wrote a pro-Nazi article in the Paris journal "Shem",
whose contents were later revealed by the Hebrew University Orientalist
Prof. Yehoshua Porat in his book "Shelach V'At B'yado", page 182. Herr
Avnery was also fond of using the concept of "Hebrew Blood" in a racial
sense, in the same way as Hitler spoke of German Aryan Blood. In those
days he was anti-Marxist, although today has no problem with associating
himself with Stalinists. Back then he repeatedly expressed admiration for
the great job Hitler was doing in remolding and renewing the German
nation. Avnery was an open admirer of Nazi propagandist Alfred Rosenberg,
adopted the latter's rhetoric, and repeatedly declared that he saw himself
as the Hebrew Alfred Rosenberg (which, in a sense, he is). Avnery ran a
tiny "journal" called The Struggle, an obvious imitation of the name "Mein
Kampf". He ran his own one-man party, whose official salute was a Nazi
raised hand.

Avnery in those days advocated creation of a Semitic "race" that would
lead the Middle East to greatness when combined with a new Hebraic
non-Jewish culture. As such, he advocated the end of the Jewish people as
a national entity and expansion of the new race into its "Semitic
Lebensraum" (yes, he used that Nazi concept!). He later wrote of his dream
for a new and better Hitler emerging, an anti-Nazi Hitler who will lead
the struggle for peace and will promote the Palestinian cause (well, at
least he got THAT part right!).

Avnery then left for Israel/Palestine. In the 60s he ran a
semi-pornographic magazine called "Haolam Hazeh," as the Israeli Larry
Flynt. The magazine also did some scandal mongering. Avnery later ran for
parliament and got elected by a sort of protest vote. [In the 1960s
Avnery wrote "Israel without Zionists", the Bible of Israeli self-hating
leftism. Ever since, he has been the Reverend Moon of Israel's far-leftist
"Post-Zionists" and he runs the small and violently anti-Israel "Gush
Shalom" organization. He is friends with Mikey Lerner and often appears in
Tikkun.

A few days ago I posted a piece on how the Spanish are ignoring human
rights and collateral damages when they go after THEIR Basque terrorists,
but insist that Israel deal with terrorism by capitulating to the demands
of terrorists. You can see the piece here:
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/39244
The Spanish are also indicting Israeli military and
political leaders for "war crimes." Well:

Let's Do Things the Spanish Way!

(reprint of item from June 2002)
by Steven Plaut

Sixteen more human sacrifices were offered up this morning to the Oslo
pagan goddess. They were murdered for one reason and one reason only:
Ariel Sharon was too cowardly to kill Yassir Arafat and the rest of the
PLO leadership behind the bombings and atrocities.

At long last, I believe I have discovered the perfect role model for
Israel of the 21st century. It is Spain. The new Spain, the democratic
Spain. Ok, when speaking with Spaniards we should actually call it
Occupied Andalusia, but you know what I mean.

But you see, Spain is a country that deals with terrorism. It has
separatist radical organizations among the Basques and Catalans, and the
Basques in particular have learned from the great success of the PLO that
bombings and violence are the best way to victory. The Basque ETA is
defined by Spain, the US and the EU as a terrorist organization. Not
activists. Not militants. Terrorists. I guess cause it does not target
Jews.

But democratic Spain has just decided to get serious about ITS terrorists
(and never mind that it of course joins the Euro Nuremberg Rally in
backing Palestinian terrorism).

You see, Spain has just made it a crime to express verbal approval of
Basque terrorism. Anyone saying publicly that they understand or justify
Basque terrorism is barred from running for election. Parties holding such
a view are to be declared illegal and their leaders and members arrested.
Spanish law criminalizes parties that "preach hatred and violence," unless
of course it is directed against Jews. The initiative to ban pro-terror
activities and parties is that of the democratically elected Prime
Minister Ansar. When the Vatican whined about this abridging the free
speech of those who support Basque terror, the Spanish Foreign Minister
called in its rep and dressed him down. Spain is serious. No nonsense.

Endorse an atrocity, go to jail.

Actually, anyone wishing to run for office will be required under Spanish
law to publicly DENOUNCE terrorism.

Now all Israel has to do is follow the lead of Spain and pass a similar
law making it illegal to endorse or justify terrorism unless it is
directed against Spain!! [But wait, isn't that sort of what Avigdor
Lieberman just proposed? And what all the Eurotrash and their Israeli
leftist amen chorus are calling racism?]

You see, in that case, every single Arab political party in Israel will be
declared illegal. Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bashara and the rest of the Arab
Knesset fascist menagerie will be placed behind bars. So will the Jewish
communists who march with and support them. Uri Avnery will be put into
solitary, along with scores of Tenured Traitors from the Israeli
universities. Meretz is likely to be declared illegal, and I am not sure
that the Israeli Labor Party will be able to survive in tact. It goes
without saying that nearly all the employees at Haaretz newspaper will be
sent to the chain gang.