Zionist Conspiracy

Ask Avishai Braverman, who personally set up the Political Science
Department there as Israel's worst anti-Israel anti-Zionist propaganda
bureau. Braverman was president of BGU for many years and was in many
ways even worse than its current President, the clueless Rivka Carmi.
Braverman filled BGU with "post-Zionists" and "New Historians." He allowed
the political science department to fire and refuse to employ Zionists.

Avishai Braverman, the "economist" Knesset Member now leading the
campaign to raise unemployment in Israel by raising the minimum wage,
pronounces today in the media:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3782178,00.html
Minister Braverman: Seek Arabs' forgiveness
Government should ask Arabs for forgiveness ahead of Yom Kippur, minister
for minority affairs says.

****

Got that? Jews should ask for forgiveness on Yom Kippur not from God but
from the Arabs. Including the Negev bedouins who have illegally seized
control of large swaths of Negev land they do not own and never paid for.

So why shouldn't Jews also ask forgiveness from the Germans for all the
suffering the Germans experienced during World War II?

Full article follows:
Minister Braverman: Seek Arabs' forgiveness

Government should ask Arabs for forgiveness ahead of Yom Kippur, minister
for minority affairs says
Ilana Curiel

Minister for Minority Affairs Avishay Braverman urged the government
Saturday to "ask for the forgiveness of Israel's Arabs" ahead of Yom
Kippur.

"The State of Israel needs to considerably ameliorate its attitude to the
Arab population in general, and the Bedouin community in particular," the
minister said at a meeting of Bedouin local council heads in the south.

Before the session, Minister Braverman toured several Bedouin communities
in the Negev desert and heard the problems faced by local residents. In
one case, residents complained that despite living in a community
officially recognized by Israel, they do not have access to water, sewage,
and electricity infrastructure.

"We must make progress this year in respect to addressing the Bedouin
population," Braverman said. "If we want law and order, we also need to do
something - they suffer from unemployment, educational problems, and a
lack of water and electricity."

'Learn from Jewish mistakes'
The minister also vowed to do everything in his power to prompt the
Israeli government to take action in order to resolve the current
problems.

Addressing one of the burning issues in the south, the question of land
ownership, Braverman said that "the time has come for a land deal. This is
a major issue that hinders many other things."

Turning his attention to the Bedouin, the minister said: "The weakness of
the Bedouin leadership and the fact that the Sheikhs' power has declined
also undermines the implementation of solutions on the ground. Learn from
the mistakes of the Jews: Cooperate in order to succeed."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
font-size: small;">

THE BATTLE OF THE BOYCOTTS

Sep. 26, 2009
Yocheved Miriam Russo , THE JERUSALEM POST

On August 20, an opinion column
published on page A-31 of the _Los Angeles Times _unleashed a firestorm
that continues to blaze in California, and in the normally placid city of
Beersheba, home of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).

The op-ed,
entitled "Boycott Israel," was written by Neve Gordon, head of BGU's
Department of Politics and Government. Gordon's published plea was for "all
foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements,
faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with
Israel."

"Nothing else has worked," Gordon lamented. "The most accurate
way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state."

Such
allegations, when made by Israel's foreign enemies, are hardly unique. But
when the denouncement comes from a Jewish Israeli who, just last January,
was promoted to head BGU's Politics and Government Department, battle lines
form quickly.

It's hardly the first time "post-Zionist" academics have
clashed with the traditional Zionist crowd, but Gordon's op-ed pushed the
debate into new territory. Gordon's words even closer to home in that his
proposed boycott would do irrevocable harm to a popular university,
specifically one which pays his salary.

When the horrified "traditional
Zionists" turned out to be wealthy Jewish Americans who donate tens of
millions of dollars to keep BGU alive and growing, the dispute was raised
to a new level. Many of the donors find themselves saying, "If BGU
professors feel free to invite the world to boycott Israel, then perhaps
the time has come to boycott BGU. Next time around, maybe we should sit on
our checkbooks."

Ari Bussel, for years a pro-Israel, pro-BGU activist
and a leader in the local chapter of American Friends of BGU, was among the
first to spot Gordon's _LA Times _op-ed.

"It was Thursday morning," the
Beverly Hills-born Bussel recalls. "The _LA Times _was delivered to our
doorstep as usual. I saw Gordon's piece, read it, and at first I wasn't all
that surprised. It's not unusual for the _LA Times _to print this sort of
anti-Israeli rhetoric. I've come to expect it. But a few minutes later, I
began to see that there was something qualitatively different about this
article.

"The local reaction was unbelievable," he continued. "An
absolute avalanche of opposition erupted, and our phones were ringing off
the hook. People who, on August 19, wouldn't have given each other the time
of day, were calling each other and everybody else they knew. They all
asked the same question: 'Who's giving money to BGU?' There are some big
donors in this area. Very big. I've never seen anything like it.

"Before
this hit, I'd never heard of Neve Gordon," says Bussel, who lived in Israel
for years and served in the IDF during the First Gulf War. "For an
American, even for someone involved in Israeli affairs, Gordon hadn't
seeped into the American national consciousness. But this anti-Israel
commentary hit home.

"For some of us, it may be the first blossoming of
the idea that President Obama has become our downfall," he speculates.
"Clearly, things are changing. Something is happening to alter people's
perception and approach to this kind of Israel bashing. And it's not over -
people are still calling, talking and writing. Three weeks afterwards, the
_LA Times_ was still printing readers' reactions. Something important
happened when this piece was published."

Unless one is a news junkie, an
academic, or closely involved with BGU, the name Neve Gordon may not ring
many bells among mainstream Israelis, either. Even so, within 48 hours,
4,000 emails protesting Gordon's remarks had landed in the inbox of BGU
President Rivka Carmi. Several days later, Carmi responded to her
department head's call for a boycott through her own LA Times op-ed,
admitting that she was "shocked" at what Gordon had written, suggesting
that even she hadn't been fully aware of what she called Gordon's
"destructive views."

"We are shocked by Dr. Neve Gordon's irresponsible
statements, which are morally deserving of full condemnation," she wrote.
"We vehemently shake ourselves free of the destructive views [advocated by
Gordon], who makes cynical use of freedom of expression in Israel and
Ben-Gurion University."

NOT EVERYONE was shocked. For years, watchdog
organizations like Campus Watch and IsraCampus had monitored Neve Gordon's
words and activities, even before Gordon made international news during the
"Siege of Ramallah," when, in 2003, he joined Palestinian Authority
Chairman Yasser Arafat, holed up in his Ramallah compound. Defying IDF
orders which forbade his entry to Ramallah, he moved in to protect Arafat,
taking up a position as a "human shield." During the height of the
intifada, when suicide bombers belonging to the military wing of Arafat's
movement were blowing up Israeli cafes and buses, a photo of Gordon and
Arafat, hands joined and held high in solidarity, splashed across the front
pages of Israeli newspapers.

According to documents compiled by watchdog
IsraCampus (www.IsraCampus.org,il), Gordon's dissident career was
politically consistent. Calling Israel an "apartheid" state had long been
part of his anti-Israel rant. Last December, at the height of Operation
Cast Lead, as Hamas rockets and missiles slammed into Israel - including
striking the BGU campus - Gordon again spoke out, denouncing not Hamas but
Israel.

Over the years, Gordon's commentary attracted an unusually
diverse crowd of supporters. Despite being Israeli and Jewish, he regularly
published his highly controversial views on websites and magazines accused
of Holocaust-denial, and ultimately became a regular columnist for _Al
Jazeera_, a Qatar-based Arabic media outlet. From there, he preached that
Israel was opposed to peace and was plotting to steal Arab lands.

Some
of Gordon's antics went beyond theory. In one incident, Gordon defended
Azmi Bishara, the disgraced former Israeli-Arab MK, a man still wanted by
the Israeli authorities for alleged spying and assistance to the terrorist
group, Hizbullah. In his impassioned defense of Bishara, Gordon falsely
accused his former Army commander, Aviv Kochavi, a decorated officer, of
being a war criminal. As a result, Kochavi's career was sidelined when he
was barred from entering Great Britain where he'd previously been accepted
for study.

In left-wing circles and academia, all of this was well
known, but none of it seemed to matter to BGU. Shortly after the public
hand-holding with Arafat, Gordon was promoted at BGU and granted tenure.
Just last January Gordon was again promoted, this time to department head,
immediately after completing a highly controversial sabbatical year at the
University of Michigan. In Michigan, according to local students, Gordon
exacerbated anti-Israel tensions by always referring to Israel as an
"apartheid regime," suggesting Israel may be even worse than South Africa.

During "Palestinian Awareness Week" Gordon gave a talk "From Colonization
to Occupation," in which he expressed support for a "one state solution."

THROUGH ALL this, Gordon remained popular at BGU, both with the
administration and among his fellow professors. When he occasionally
attracted unfavorable publicity, Carmi defended him as a "serious and
distinguished researcher into human rights," lashing out at his detractors
by calling them "Kahanists."

Nor was Gordon alone in his views at BGU.
Shortly after the BGU president pleaded in her op-ed response for the
continued support of the university despite the "egregious remarks of one
person," evidence emerged to the effect that Gordon wasn't just "one
person." Prof. Fred Lazin, who teaches political science within that
department, acknowledged that before Gordon submitted his op-ed to the _LA
Times_, Gordon submitted his remarks to the department as a whole, offering
to step down as chair if they thought his words would prove too
embarrassing. "There was a unanimous decision not to let him do that,"
Lazin said.

David Newman, Gordon's BGU colleague, championed Gordon's
remarks. "This is something which Israel's universities can be proud of,"
Newman wrote in a _Jerusalem Post _op-ed. "It is this level of democracy,
pluralism and freedom of speech which few in the world, not least many of
those proposing boycotts from abroad, can share."

Indeed, other BGU
departments - geography, history and sociology - also harbor professors who
share Gordon's anti-Zionist, anti-Israel views. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, who
teaches in BGU's Department of Jewish History, had also denounced Israel as
an "apartheid regime" in _Tikkun _magazine.

Students were supportive,
too. A contingent sent their own letter to Carmi, expressing support for
Gordon's "welcome efforts to bring important issues to the public regarding
the future of Israeli society - issues that are absent from the legitimate
public dialogue."

"We are taught history but it seems we are not allowed
to learn from it," the student letter read. "We're allowed to learn, but
not to think, not to reach practical conclusions…"

Nor is Gordon's
support limited to just BGU. Petitions supporting Gordon began circulating
not only at Beersheba University, but at other academic institutions as
well. At one point, over 185 Israeli professors, from several institutions,
signed petitions defending Gordon.

ON THE other side of the ideological
divide, among both Israelis and Americans, the reaction to Gordon's
comments ranged from pure fury to thoughtful consideration of what could be
done.

Haifa-born Nurit Greenger, now living in Beverly Hills, for many
years a BGU supporter, was among those who were furious. In a letter to
fellow Israel supporters, Greenger wrote, "For years this Israeli citizen,
Gordon, walked a marginally seditious line, but with his call to boycott
Israel he crossed that line monumentally."

"His call," the letter went
on, "to boycott Israel raises the question: How many more 'Gordons' live in
Israel and are teaching the next generation to undermine their own
homeland's existence?"

In a phone interview, Greenger spoke bluntly.
"I'm very angry about Gordon's call to the whole world to boycott Israel.
It's a very serious problem."

Greenger is among those calling for a
boycott of BGU. "It's an oxymoron," she says. "BGU comes to us all the
time, asking for money - 'Support the University! Support BGU! We make the
Negev bloom! We have all these wonderful projects to help our beautiful
Israel' - but then they allow professors to publish articles in the _LA
Times_, begging the world to boycott Israel? That's crazy! Then they get
upset when we question them? They want our money, but at the same time
they're telling us we shouldn't look at what their professors are doing and
saying? The time for that is long over."

Encouraging "key donors" to
support other Israeli institutions instead of BGU is one of Greenger's
missions. "It's time for us to exercise some 'academic freedom' of our
own," she says. "We need to decide which of Israel's academic institutions
we wish to support. The way to cure anti-Israelism is to redirect
benefactors' funds from the kind of places that hire people like Neve
Gordon, and channeling it instead to educational institutions that hold
strong Zionist sentiments, Ariel University, the Jerusalem College of
Technology, the Sami Shamoon College of Engineering."

There were
students among the traditional Zionists, too. "Im Tirtzu" ("If You Will
It"), a pro-Israel student organization at BGU, began circulating a
petition against Gordon. Within two days, 54 instructors at BGU had signed.

The petition criticized Gordon for exploiting academic freedom and
freedom of speech, noting the BGU's funding comes from the very country
he's is asking the world to boycott. They characterized Gordon's view as
that of a "fringe group of daydreamers among Israeli academia in general,
and BGU in particular," adding that Gordon's leftist activities made them
ashamed to have him on the staff.

THE IMMEDIATE impact of the Gordon
piece resulted in community meetings where BGU supporters - and former BGU
supporters - gathered to discuss strategy. They also contacted Israel's
Consul-General in Los Angeles, Yaakov (Yaki) Dayan, who ultimately sent a
letter Carmi, advising her that Gordon's statements were proving
"detrimental" to the university.

"Since the article was published I've
been contacted by people who care for Israel," Dayan wrote. "Some of them
are benefactors of BGU. They were unanimous in threatening to withhold
their donations to your institution. My attempt to explain that one bad
apple would affect hundreds of researchers turned out to be futile."

PART OF what irks traditional Zionists about Gordon's tactics is his
demand for complete freedom of speech for himself, but not for anyone who
disagrees with him. Gordon went so far as to file a SLAPP suit (Strategic
Lawsuit Against Public Participation), designed to discourage critics,
against University of Haifa professor Steven Plaut.

For anyone lucky
enough to be watching from the sidelines, the Gordon vs. Plaut litigation
ranks as one of the more entertaining chapters in the annals of Israeli
legal history. Not so for Plaut, presumably, since he was paying his own
legal bills.

It began when Plaut, himself a tenured professor and a
long-time critic of Gordon's politics, took Gordon to task by publishing an
op-ed on the website of a now-defunct California organization. Plaut
criticized Gordon's long history of publishing in Holocaust-denial websites
and magazines.

"It was right after the Ramallah incident," Plaut says.
"I called him a 'Judenrat wannabie.' I didn't attack him personally - I
attacked his politics. Look, Gordon writes his own columns, he's a public
figure. Criticizing his politics is what freedom of speech is for. I also
called him 'a groupie of the world's leading Jewish Holocaust denier,
Norman Finkelstein.'"

Gordon could hardly dispute that, Plaut notes.
"Gordon had compared Finkelstein to the prophets of the Bible. But somehow
Gordon came across my internet column, hired an Arab lawyer to represent
him, and filed suit for libel. He didn't like being in the same sentence
with the words 'Holocaust denier,' even though I'd said that about
Finkelstein, not about him."

Plaut, like Gordon, believed himself to be
exercising his basic right to freedom of speech. "In Israel, there's
supposed to be absolute freedom of speech in terms of criticizing another
person's politics. No one has ever been punished for that. I was just
making fun of his politics."

Although lawsuits are normally filed in the
hometown of either the plaintiff or defendant, Gordon filed his suit in
Nazareth. "Gordon lived in Jerusalem, teaches in Beersheba, and I live in
Haifa," Plaut says. "I can only suppose that by filing in Nazareth, Gordon
hoped to get a favorable Arab judge - which he did. When the decision came
down, I think everyone was astonished to see how Judge Reem Naddaf used her
decision to attack Israel.

"She wrote into her opinion that all of
Israel - all, not part - was built on land stolen from other people," he
continues. "Then she went on to justify Holocaust revisionism. In her
decision, the judge wrote things not even Neve Gordon had said."

She
also imposed a whopping fine. "Gordon hadn't alleged any financial losses,"
Plaut says. "But in a libel suit, Israeli law permits the award of NIS
50,000. She fined me NIS 100,000."

That's when Harvard professor Alan
Dershowitz, a major player in the US legal community, jumped in with his
incisive commentary. In a column published in the _Jerusalem Post _on
November 8, 2006, Dershowitz addressed the issues and then wrote, "It is my
opinion that Neve Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis, Holocaust
justice deniers, and anti-Semites…. he is a despicable example of a
self-hating Jew and a self-hating Israeli, whose writing consists of
anti-Israeli propaganda designed to 'prove' that the Jewish State is
fascist."

Then Dershowitz issued his own make-my-day challenge to
Gordon: "Sue me, too."

Gordon didn't sue Dershowitz, brushing off his
challenge as "a cheap dare," while Plaut appealed the Nazareth decision. In
a stunning reversal, a three-judge panel rejected every demand made by
Gordon and agreed to almost all of Plaut's. Legal decisions are rarely
characterized by speculation, but one of the appellate judges, Judge
Abraham Abraham, offered unique commentary in his written opinion. "Even if
Plaut had described Gordon as a "Jew for Hitler," (which Plaut had not) he
would have been within his rights," the judge wrote.

While the most
recent court decision was a victory for Plaut, the litigation continues,
with the case set to be heard by the Supreme Court on October 13.

SOME
COMMENTATORS claim that the real danger of this internal Israeli call for a
boycott against Israel is that it encourages and provides cover for
anti-Israel sentiments in the international community.

Gerald Steinberg,
a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University who heads the
Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, sees Gordon's call for a boycott as part of a
series of events designed to "demonize" Israel.

"Neve Gordon and his
pro-boycott article … is another example of the Durban [an anti-Racism
conference which was largely seen as anti-Israel] demonization strategy
based on total international isolation of Israel through boycotts and
sanctions in order to follow the South African anti-apartheid model,"
Steinberg said, referring to Israel's recent clashes with Sweden over their
"stolen organ" blood libel and Great Britain, whose funding of "Breaking
the Silence" encouraged Israeli soldiers to admit to IDF war crimes.

There were those who, while angered by Gordon's call for boycott, took a
more philosophical approach, seeking a way to balance "academic freedom"
with the best interests of the community.

In any communal organization,
no one enjoys unrestricted rights, they note. Just as the right to swing
your arms stops where the other fellow's nose begins, why can't there be
some limit on the things anyone - professor or not - is entitled to say, if
his words will prove detrimental to the community as a whole?

The
Zionist Organization of America has not yet issued a policy statement
regarding the Neve Gordon/BGU affair, but Jeff Daube, Director of the
Israel ZOA office and a life-long Zionist activist, articulated a common
sentiment. "My desire is not to constrain anyone's freedom of speech,"
Daube said. "But I think there's nothing at all wrong with a university
saying, 'This is a Zionist institution. Statements (like Neve Gordon's) do
actual harm to the collective, to the Jewish people living in Israel. Just
as most societies limit free speech when the speech will prove harmful -
libel or slander - then if some speech brings harm to the society as a
whole, why can't that be limited as well?'"

Other suggestions were put
forward, such as encouraging BGU to hold a public meeting on the topic, to
allow everyone to have a right to exercise their freedom of speech, or
establishing campus "Zionist Centers" to teach Zionist principles. Daniel
Gordis of the Shalem Institute advocated a wholesale revision of the
education system.

"A century ago, who could have imagined that the
Jewish state would one day have a world-class army but a failing,
collapsing education system?" he wrote. "(Israel) needs a liberal arts
college, and the young people prepared to speak constructively about Jewish
sovereignty, its challenges, its failures and its future that only that
kind of college can produce."

THE CALL to "boycott BGU" threw university
officials into a panic, resulting in a flurry of commentary, as well as a
quickly-scheduled trip to the US by Carmi and other faculty members hoping
to stem the tide of opposition.

Their position: Boycotting BGU - or any
other Israeli educational institution - isn't the answer.

Ronni
Strongin, another member of the American Associates of BGU, stressed that
since Gordon "has tenure and cannot be fired," the university finds itself
in an impossible position. The University, she noted, includes some 25,000
students, faculty and staff with many different missions. To inflict
collective punishment by withholding funds from the university as a whole
"allows the fulfillment of Gordon's wishes." Within a week, BGU issued
statements to the effect that Gordon will not be fired, although BGU
officials are still considering their options regarding removing him as
department head.

Carmi insists there's little the university can do to a
tenured professor. "Like it or not, Gordon cannot be readily dismissed. The
law in Israel is very clear, and the university is a law-abiding
institution," she wrote in her _LA Times _response, and in a later
statement to YNet, she said that "the demand for (Gordon's) resignation (as
department head) is legitimate and I hope that after this tough week he
will reach the right decision."

University Rector Jimmy Weinblatt,
following a meeting with the professors who had signed petitions supporting
Gordon stressed that Gordon's status as faculty member will not be
compromised, and that the university administration will not violate his
civic and academic freedom of expression. Weinblatt, who said he believes
"it is not appropriate that Gordon continue in his position" and hopes "he
(will) reach the proper conclusions," said of university policy, "we are a
democratic country with freedom of expression for everyone, even if his
opinions are unacceptable to the rest.

"We support freedom of expression
and academic freedom which are at the heart of any university," he added.

Jonathan Rosenblum was among those who upheld the legitimacy of a donor
boycott. In a _Jerusalem Post _op-ed, he wrote that "while an academic has
the right to his opinions, private donors who find his views or research
repugnant are equally entitled not to support that research. Given the
fungibility, of money that might mean withholding support from the
university that employs him."

Professors, Rosenblum suggests, cannot be
held immune from criticism. "Professors, like everyone else, should expect
to have their work evaluated. Just as parents and students have an interest
in knowing which professors have a tendency to get too friendly with female
students, so do they have a right to form judgments about which professors
are using their classrooms for political indoctrination."

"In general,"
Rosenbaum continues, "it would be foolish to refrain from contributing to a
university based on the views of one faculty member one finds repugnant.
Doing so would eliminate virtually every potential recipient. But Neve
Gordon is not a solitary rogue professor on the BGU campus. The BGU
Department of Politics and Government, which he chairs, fits the
description of former Minister of Education Amnon Rubinstein of academic
departments in Israel, in which no traditional Zionist could be appointed."

NEITHER SIDE is happy. BGU officials rue the fact that they're under
pressure from two sides. "We have heard the calls by those who demand that
the university ignore Israeli law and fire Gordon, a tenured faculty
member," Carmi said, "And we are also under attack by others who champion
Gordon on the basis of freedom of speech."

Given the fact that BGU
officials insist Gordon will remain as a member of the faculty, those who
oppose Gordon's continued presence on the teaching staff at BGU were also
unhappy.

Jeff Daube suggests the tension is far from over. "It's obvious
that President Carmi would very much like to sweep this whole affair under
the carpet, move on to something else, make believe it never happened - up
until the next insult. From here on, it's only going to get worse. If those
who hate Israel see they can get away with this kind of speech, I hate to
think what else they'll do next.

"Once you've called for an
international boycott, what's left?" Daube asks. "Maybe a call for the
unilateral dismantling of the State? Followed by that line, 'Would the last
one to leave please turn off the lights'?"

Nor does Ari Bussel believe
any significant donor boycott of BGU will take place. "The major donors
will be persuaded to go on giving money," he says. "It will be life as
usual. The difference this case made is that it set off a fundamental
change in the attitude of American Jewry. Now the red line has been
crossed. So the next time this happens - which it will - it's going to be
much more difficult to persuade donors to keep supporting BGU.

"There's
only so much one person can do," Bussel laments. "I know that at the end of
the day, people pay the price for what they do - we all will. But one thing
I know for sure. The next time I go to someone and ask for money for
Israel, I know it's going to be that much harder. How are we - how are any
of us - going to fight the next call for divestment, or for a boycott, if
Israel itself is calling for it?"

[The article came out in the weekend
edition of the Jerusalem Post for Shabbat Shuva, the sabbath between Rosh
Hashana and Yom Kippur, when numerous major donors to Israeli universities
are in Israel]

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com
/servlet/Satellite?cid=1253820679728 font-size: small;">(you might find the
"talkbacks" interesting - on the Jerusalem Post page on which the articles
appears, at above web address)

Links:
------
[1]
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1253820679728
[2]
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1253820679728&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

2.

GOLDSTONE IS THE CRIMINAL

Ben-Dror Yemini, Maariv, 25.9.09

Let's start at the end. Richard Goldstone perpetrated a moral crime. Not
against the State of Israel but against human rights. He turned them into
a weapon for dark regimes. Goldstone was not negligent. He did this with
malice.

The criticism that was made in the first days following the report was on
the basis of preliminary study. But time passes. And the more that the
details of this report are revealed, the more it becomes clear that it is
a libel. A libel with legal cover. A libel that was prepared in advance
to incriminate the State of Israel, in the service of Libya and Iran.
Goldstone willingly took up the loathsome role. He supplied these
countries with the goods. The claim that "the discourse of rights" has
become the dark forces' most effective tool is a familiar one. The
Goldstone report is the supreme expression of this. Its legal terminology
is exemplary. It gushes about international human rights treaties. But
it cannot hide the result: It is a libelous indictment of the State of
Israel, in the service of the axis of terrorism and evil. Yes, there is
marginal . very marginal . lip service regarding criticism of Hamas.
Goldstone's ilk is a sophisticated lot. They now reiterate from every
stage, and Goldstone does it well, that they were actually objective.
Here, they also leveled criticism at Hamas. How enlightened of them!

Goldstone sold his soul for an endless series of lies. Even Mary
Robinson, who is not known as an admirer of Israel, understood that, "This
is unfortunately a practice by the [UN Human Rights] Council: adopting
resolutions guided not by human rights but by politics. This is very
regrettable." She refused to take the post. Goldstone took it and
carried it out with excessive enthusiasm. If international law worked as
it should, if the representatives of dark regimes did not have an
automatic majority in it, Goldstone would have to stand trial. But this
is impossible. And therefore, not only Israel but every moral person,
every person for whom human rights are important, must declare Goldstone a
criminal. Here is the proof.

***

Let's start with what is not in the report. In its almost 600 pages there
is not one word . there simply isn't! . about Hamas's ideology. Hamas has
a covenant. This covenant is the basis for the conflict between Israel
and the demonic entity that has arisen in Gaza. This covenant is pure
anti-Semitism. This covenant makes it clear that Hamas is no different
from the Taliban. On the contrary, it is worse. The leaders of Hamas
also declare . in their own voices . their solidarity with the Taliban,
their desire to take over the entire free world, their hatred of Jews and
their abrogation of the ceasefire with Israel. But there is not one word
in the Goldstone report about this. Contrary to the general impression,
Israel is not Hamas's main victim. As in other

cases where radical Islam grows, most of Hamas's victims since Israel's
withdrawal from Gaza . have been Muslims. Hamas's Kassam rockets, suicide
terrorists, abductions and military operations do not stem from the
occupation or the blockade, as the Goldstone Mission either claims or
hints. All of these actions stem from an Islamo-fascist ideology that
massacres mainly Muslims. Even during Operation Cast Lead, Hamas killed
more Palestinians than Israelis. Goldstone and his cohorts did not hear
about this.

It was one thing if Goldstone had just ignored the link between ideology
and actual practice. But in addition, when he jumps to Israel, he takes
the trouble to disparage the Zionist enterprise. Thus, for example, in
Article 207 of the report, in a footnote, he tells about confiscated
Palestinian property. Not that it has any relevance. But the
sophisticated Goldstone had to provide Hamas with justifications.
Historic accuracy? Certainly not. This is another product of the
industry of lies. Because the property robbed and confiscated from Jewish
refugees who were forced out of Arab countries was greater than Arab
property left behind in Israel. But let us not confuse Goldstone by
investigating the truth.

***

There is no need to go far in order to expose the lies. It is possible to
start with the first paragraph. There, Goldstone says that he was granted
the authority, "to investigate all violations of international human
rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been
committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were
conducted in Gaza." Really?

At this stage, let us go to the UN Human Rights Council decision to
appoint the mission. Article 14, regarding the mission's authority, says:
"To investigate all violations of international human rights law and
international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the
Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression,
and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to
fully cooperate with the mission."

The difference is Heaven and Earth. Goldstone, I repeat, is not stupid.
He is a sophisticated jurist. He understands that the Human Rights
Council decision puts him in a bind. There is no demand for an
investigation. There are instructions to investigate only Israel, while
fixing blame in advance. Thus Article 14 and thus others in the same
document. How does Goldstone square the circle? First, he does not
mention Article 14 . which is the source of his authority . throughout the
entire report. And second, in cooperation with the Council President, who
was authorized to appoint the mission (but not to change its
responsibilities), the authorization is improved in order to present a
false objectivity. You see, Goldstone will claim in fawning interviews .
we were authorized to investigate both sides. He is lying and he knows
that he is lying.

It is not only the lie in the first paragraph. It goes on. In order to
supply the goods, Professor Christine Chinkin, an expert on international
law, was recruited to the mission, for example. There is only one
problem. Before being appointed to the mission, Chinkin signed a petition
that determined in advance that Israel had perpetrated war crimes. Can
someone who took a position in advance sit on the mission? And indeed,
the mission was presented with a legal suit for her dismissal. The suit
was denied. There is absolutely no difference between the "judge's"
pre-determination and the Council's. And when dozens of jurists
petitioned the mission to dismiss Chinkin, Goldstone rejected them. It is
clear why. The identity between the judge and the Council was absolute.

We must tarry another moment on the Council's decision. Any enlightened
person should give deference to human rights and the international bodies
dealing with them. This Council is the UN's most important body. And
indeed, it seems that 33 countries participated in the vote on
establishing the mission. And the results: Not one western democracy
supported the decision; most abstained. One country voted against .
Canada. The third-world countries voted in favor, as did all of the
Islamic countries.

Can such an automatic majority . of non-democratic countries . be taken
seriously? Certainly not. The Council will not send a Libyan
representative to discuss human rights The representative from Pakistan,
a country which caused millions of refugees only two months ago, in the
framework of a just struggle against several hundred Taliban fighters .
will find it hard to talk about "collective punishment" on CNN. For the
charade of accusing Israel, one needs an internationally renowned jurist.
He'll do the work. The automatic dark majority does not need to convince
itself. It needs someone to publish articles in The New York Times and
Ha'aretz, and appear on the BBC.

This is how to turn Israel into a pariah. This is propaganda that even
Goebbels the genius didn't dream of. He is also a Jew; he even has a
"Zionist" past. There could be no casting more perfect.

***

A precise study of the report reveals how the libel was perpetrated. This
is no cheap, old-fashioned libel. This is a much more sophisticated
libel. Now it is called a "narrative." The Goldstone mission builds the
narrative one stage after another. Does libel start with the Kassams that
began to fall in 2001? No way. Does the Executive Summary say anything
about the thousands of Kassams that have been fired since and have turned
the lives of the residents of southern Israel into hell? Not with
Goldstone. After the clauses regarding the appointment of the mission
members, relevant international law, methodology and Israel's
non-cooperation, the mission gets down to business. The findings. The
factual determinations and the verdict.

***

And indeed, the narrative begins with Article 27 (of the Executive
Summary), entitled "The Blockade." According to the article, Israel
imposed a blockade. Why? What happened? How did it start? Were there
thousands of rockets? Did Hamas take military control of the Strip, while
massacring dozens . maybe hundreds . of Palestinians? There is not a word
in the opening account. Neither is there any mention of Hamas's internal
terrorism against innocent Palestinians.

And this isn't all. If there is a blockade, it is not only Israel's
responsibility. The Hamas regime has a long border with Egypt. It seems
that this border is completely open. Hundreds of tunnels operate there on
a regular basis and deliver everything the Hamas regime wants. The
mission's Executive Summary makes no mention of the tunnels, the open
border with Egypt or the smuggling. And what does the report say about
the blockade? "Gaza's economy is further severely effected by the
reduction of the fishing zone open to Palestinian fishermen." This is an
amazing example of the mission's being recruited for the industry of lies.
And the Palestinians established industries before the "blockade"? See,
there is free movement of materials, through the tunnels. The problem is
that Hamas has chosen only one raw material. Explosives. And there is
also a flourishing industry. The production of rockets. "For the
Palestinian people," claimed Fathi Hamad, a Hamas member of Parliament,
"death became an industry." This even appears in Article 475. But
Goldstone, the Devil's advocate, insists on blaming Israel. The same
Fathi, in the same speech, admits with his own voice that Hamas, " created
a human shield of women, children, [and] the elderly." This is also cited
in the report. But Goldstone, " does not consider it to constitute
evidence." (Article 476) Certainly. When the result has been
pre-determined, even the explicit, filmed and recorded admission of a
senior Hamas official, like the video footage of the use of children, will
not change the conviction. Is it possible to call such work by Goldstone
"negligence", or is it a crime, in the service of a terrorist regime?

Article 28 simplistically determines that Israel is the occupying power.
Why? Because. Only in Article 88 does the mission see fit to mention the
disengagement. As if it had no bearing on the story. As if Israel had
not proven that it had no interest in the Strip. As if Israel had not
fulfilled all of its obligations. As if Israel had not left the
Palestinians to their fate, so that they could govern themselves, without
a single soldier or settler.

Article 29 says that Israel embarked on Operation Cast Lead. Were there
barrages of rockets beforehand? They appear later on but not in the
Executive Summary. Apparently, they are not relevant. This is how one
constructs a lie. Start with a blockade. Then a criminal assault.
That's the Executive Summary.

The mission's lie repeats itself when it presents a false picture of
permanent Israeli aggression. In exactly the same way, the mission says,
in Article 193, that Israel began Operation Defensive Shield and caused
the killing of hundreds of Palestinians. There is not even one word about
the series of terrorist attacks on cafes, restaurants and buses. There is
not one word about the Passover massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya, in
which 30 Israelis were murdered . a massacre which broke Israel's long
restraint.

Article 30 deals with the number of casualties but ignores . of course .
any study which proves that most of the Palestinian casualties were Hamas
personnel. In order to strengthen the impression, the report presents the
number of Palestinian dead as opposed to the number of Israelis. The
proportionality creates the result. So many Palestinians were killed. So
few Israelis. According to this logic, NATO perpetrated war crimes in
bombing Yugoslavia in 1999, because the results were similar to those in
Gaza: Over 1,000 Yugoslav dead (mostly civilians) and zero casualties
among the NATO forces. Thus in Afghanistan as well. Far more Afghans,
civilians and fighters, have been killed than NATO soldiers. Does this
turn the NATO countries and soldiers into war criminals? And there will
yet be proportionality issues. Pakistan sought to get rid of the vexing
problem caused by several hundred Taliban fighters. It caused thousands
of dead and millions of refugees. Thus also in Lebanon, when it was
obliged to fight a few hundred Fatah al-Islam fighters. Their refugee
camp, Nahr al-Bared, was destroyed. Hundreds were killed and tens of
thousands became refugees.

The world understands that these are the proportions of dealing with
terrorists, who hide among civilians. But when Goldstone comes to Israel
. he refuses to understand even though Hamas's threat to Israel is greater
than the Taliban's threat to Europe or Fatah al-Islam's to Lebanon.
Goldstone knows the new battlefields. But he ignores because the goal was
to demonize Israel. And therefore, he must lie and mislead.

Article 32 deals with Israel's bombing of Palestinian Authority buildings,
rejects the Israeli claim that these were part of the, "Hamas terrorist
infrastructure," and determines that these were, "deliberate attacks on
civilian objects in violation of the rule of customary international
humanitarian law." Certainly. If they ignore the fact that Hamas is a
terrorist entity that uses terrorism mainly against innocent Palestinians
as well . the result is that this is a legitimate political body. Maybe
even a charitable organization. Now it is possible to understand why the
mission ignores the Hamas Covenant. It is no coincidence. It is easier
to square the circle that way.

***

How is Hamas absolved of responsibility for serious crimes? The Goldstone
report cites hundreds of inquiries that were carried out by various
groups. One of the groups cited is, of course, Amnesty International,
which has provided countless hostile reports against Israel. These are
cited extensively. But there was another Amnesty report, issued on
21.2.09. This surprising report reviews a series of incidents in which
Hamas eliminated dozens of Fatah members, during the time of Operation
Cast Lead, in Gaza. And here's the surprise: Of all the reports, it is
this one which is not mentioned in the Goldstone report. There is mention
of attacks on Fatah personnel (in Article 80, for example), but with
exaggerated effort to minimize the significance of the matter.

The general impression is that Goldstone is much more critical towards
Fatah than towards Hamas. For example, Goldstone blames Fatah for the
"refusal to cede control of the security institutions" in favor of the
Hamas (Article 190), causing the confrontation between the factions.
Hamas, according to the whole report, is a completely legitimate body that
should control the security institutions. Goldstone stubbornly refuses to
see the very anti-Semitic and terrorist nature of Hamas, an entity whose
very existence is a crime against humanity.

***

It is possible to continue, article after article, in order to expose the
construction of the deceptions and the lies. The mission details 36
factual events that prove, as it were, that Israel perpetrated war crimes.
In their reduced framework below, let us examine the attack on the Abd
Rabbo family. This event became one of the most prominent symbols of
Operation Cast Lead, received widespread coverage and was mentioned in
many reports. The Goldstone report devotes ten articles (768-777) to this
incident. The mission repeated the claim that family members waived a
white flag and that its daughters were murdered in cold blood by Israel.
This claim is not only negligent, it is also a malicious lie. Thorough
checks have shown that family members agave different and contradictory
versions. One of the claims was that this was cold-blooded murder because
there were no Hamas personnel in the area. It seems that this claim has
also been refuted, by contradictory testimony, even byTime magazine, to
the effect that there were indeed Hamas personnel in the area. Moreover,
it seems that Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reports that, ""The Abd Rabbo family kept
quiet while Hamas fighters turned their farm in the Gaza strip into a
fortress." The testimony is contradictory and the Time and Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida reports were supposed to be before the mission. But there is
not even a hint of them in the Goldstone report, which publishes a libel,
even though it has already been contradicted. The objective has been
marked. The facts will not confuse the mission.

***

The foregoing is only the tip of the iceberg. Space is too short to
detail the parade of lies known as "the Goldstone Report." We have
presented here only isolated examples about the method. Goldstone, who
chose to collaborate with the dark majority, supplied the goods. The
report deserves a much closer study. The State of Israel must establish a
commission of inquiry, led by top-notch jurists, in cooperation with their
colleagues from around the world, in order to examine article after
article, claim after claim, and refute the libel. Israel should also
inquire its own misdeeds. The argument here is not that Israel is exempted
from criticism. Every loss of human life is regrettable, and should be
examined, in order to see how much Israel is responsible (as I recommended
in previous article). But not in the way of the Goldstone Fact Finding
Mission. The deeper one digs into the report, the more it becomes clear
that Goldstone is a criminal hiding under the umbrella of human rights.
On behalf of human rights, he and his lies must be exposed. The truth
must come to light.

* * *

----------------------------------------

To the readers:

Any comment or additional information about the deception and the lies of
the report or the members of the commision will be welcomed at my email:
Ben-Dror Yemini (bdeyemini@gmail.com).

Links to translated articles: :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Dror_Yemini

SO let's sum things up. The UN sets up a biased anti-Israel "commission
of inquiry," led by a nominally Jewish judge from South Africa. The report
concludes that Palestinians engaged in war crimes and Israelis engaged in
war crimes in the Gaza battle, but it was mainly the Israelis. As expected,
it regards all acts of defense by Israel to be war crimes. The only
response to 8000 rockets fired at Jews by the terrorhoids that would NOT be
regarded by the commission as war crimes would be total capitulation by
Israel to terrorist demands. Those 8000 rockets, it goes without saying,
were NOT 8000 war crimes.

Now if Goldstone had chaired a commission of
investigation into atrocities in Germany in 1943, it would have concluded
that the Germans carried out crimes against Jews, the Jews carried out
crimes against Germans, but it was mainly the latter. In other words the
"Report's" mock "symmetry" is little more than a cover for its anti-Israel
bias. Its "even-handedness" is little more than a smoke screen for its
bashing Israel. It was precisely the same sort of "balance" one has come to
expect from anything the UN touches.

The fact that Goldstone himself is Jewish? Goldtsone is in fact a leftist
basher of Israel. Most of the worst
anti-Semites on earth today are Jewish, and many of THOSE teach at Israeli
universities. Goldstone has an Op-Ed in the Jerusalem Post whining about
how noble and moral he and his UN team were:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1253198167254 font-family: Times
New Roman;"> . There he writes: "The recognition of the humanity of all
people - the recognition of Israel by Hamas and the recognition of the
Palestinian right to self-determination - are both pre-requisites for
peace." Says Goldstone! Well, I guess he would also attribute German
crimes against Jews in the 1940s to the failure of Jews to recognize the
rights of Germans to self-determination in the Sudetenland, Memel, and
Danzig.

The only moral conduct of the war by Israel of which the UN and
Goldstone would approve would be Israel losing the war.

Well, there is another twist to the Goldstone atrocity that is evidently
all but unknown.
For years Goldstone ran the South Africa "Friends of" Office for the Hebrew
University and sat on the Hebrew University Board of Governors. (See
http://abbc.net/islam/english/jewishp/un/goldstone_un_investigator_hebrew_university.htm
[2])

Now why are we not surprised that the Hebrew University had such a
person serving as one of its highest officials and representatives?

In other words, the same Hebrew University that has become to a great
extent a
den of leftist anti-Israel hatred and bias, has long had Goldstone on its
team. Leftists of a feather….

Meanwhile:

Dershowitz on the Goldstone
"Report": http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36391 [3]

GOLDSTONE REPORT A BARRIER TO PEACE
By: Alan M. Dershowitz
WEDNESDAY,
SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

-------------------------

_Encouraging Israel's
enemies to provoke Israeli self-defense measures._

There are many things
wrong with the Goldstone report which accuses Israel of deliberately
targeting civilians in order to punish the people of Gaza. First, its
primary conclusions are entirely false as a matter of demonstrable fact.
Second, it defames one of the most moral military forces in the world,
along with one of the most responsive legal systems and one of the freest
nations in the world when it comes to dissent. Third, it destroys the
credibility of "international human rights" and proves that this honorable
concept has been hijacked for political purposes directed primarily against
one nation--Israel.

But fourth, and most important, it has set back
prospects of peace by making it far more difficult for Israel to withdraw
from the West Bank. When Israel was considering its withdrawal from Gaza,
some critics predicted that the transfer of Israeli troops out of this
dangerous area would encourage terrorists to fire rockets at Israeli
civilians who live in close proximity to the Gaza Strip. Those who favored
the withdrawal argued that if Palestinian terrorists were to fire rockets
from the unoccupied Gaza, Israel would have a perfect right to do whatever
it took militarily to stop its civilians from being targeted by enemy
rockets. They pointed out that every country has the right to self defense
under the United Nations Charter and under the rules of international law.
(I favored the withdrawal, as did many liberal supporters of Israel and
believed that Israel had the military capacity to respond to any rocket
attacks.)

As soon as the Israeli army left the Gaza Strip, Hamas decided
to launch rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets. The Hamas website
proudly proclaimed, "The Zionist Army is afraid that the Palestinians will
increase the range of the new rockets, placing the towns and villages in
the [Zionist] entity in danger." These Hamas rocket attacks increased over
the years until more than a million Israelis were within range. Thousands
were traumatized, dozens were injured and several were killed by the
thousands of anti-personnel rockets that targeted children, women and other
civilians. As candidate Barak Obama said when he went to visit Sderot, the
town most devastated by these unprovoked Hamas war crimes:

"The first
job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you
that if…If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two
daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop
that. And I would expect Israeli to do the same thing."

Israel protested
these rocket attacks to the United Nations, but to no avail. They increased
in frequency and range.

The citizens of Israel, especially those in
range of the attacks, demanded that their army protect them and not wait
until a rocket hit a school bus filled with children or a nursery. Since
most of the rockets were fired while children were on route to or just
beginning their classes, the risk of a cataclysmic tragedy were
considerable. Finally after enduring years of rocket attacks, Israel
decided to undertake military action to stop them.

Just before the
hostilities began, Israel offered a carrot and a stick: it reopened a
checkpoint to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. It had closed the point
of entry after the checkpoint had been targeted by Gazan rockets. (On
several prior occasions, Hamas rockets had targeted Israel points of entry
through which aid had been provided. It was as if Hams was deliberately
trying to manufacture a humanitarian crisis. Israel's prime minister, Ehud
Olmert, also issued a stern, final warning to Hamas that unless it stopped
the rockets, there would be a full-scale military response.

This is the
way Reuters reported it:

"Israel reopened border crossings with the Gaza
Strip on Friday, a day after Prime Minister warned militants there to stop
firing rockets or they would pay a heavy price. Despite the movement of
relief supplies, militants fired about a dozen rockets and mortar shafts
from Gaza at Israel on Friday. One accidentally struck a house in Gaza,
killing two Palestinian sisters, ages 5 and 13. [T]he deliveries could ease
the tensions that might have led to a military action to end the rocket
attacks. Palestinian workers at the crossings said fuel had arrive for
Gaza's main power plant and about a hundred trucks loaded with grain,
humanitarian aid and other good were expected during the day."

Finally in
desperation Israel launched an attack designed to stop the rockets. It
succeeded in large part though some rocket attacks have continued. Because
Hamas fired its rockets from behind human shields, it was inevitable that
there would be civilian casualties, despite Israeli efforts to reduce them
by making hundreds of thousands of phone calls and leaflet drops warning
civilians to stay out of the streets.

Goldstone's one-sided condemnation
on Israel will make it far more difficult for Israeli leaders to persuade
their citizens to remove their soldiers from the West Bank. Rockets fired
from the West Bank would endanger far more Israeli civilians and threaten
to close the Ben. Israel now knows that if it were to try to defend itself
against such rockets, it would once again be condemned by the United
Nations. It will now be far more difficult for Israelis who oppose a
continued presence of Israeli troops on the West Bank to persuade a
majority of Israelis that the army can protect them even if they leave the
West Bank, without incurring the wrath of the international community.
Gurion Airport

The effect, if not the intent, of the Goldstone report
will be to keep Israeli troops in the West Bank longer. President Obama was
right when he said that "the first job of any nation is to protect its
citizens." The Goldstone report has made it virtually impossible for the
Israeli army to protect its citizens against rocket attacks from territory
that is no longer militarily occupied. It encourages Israel's enemies to
provoke Israeli self-defense measures, which they know will produce
condemnation of the Jewish state. This is a great tragedy, for Israelis,
for Palestinians and for all who favor a two-state solution and an end to
the occupation.

See also this:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3780295,00.html [4]

And

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9067 [5]

2.
The "Forward" morphs into the weekly of Jewish Treason:

http://www.forward.com/articles/114180/ [6]

Links:
------
[1]
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1253198167254&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[2]
http://abbc.net/islam/english/jewishp/un/goldstone_un_investigator_hebrew_university.htm
[3]
http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36391
[4]
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3780295,00.html
[5]
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9067
[6]
http://www.forward.com/articles/114180/

1. The latest disgrace coming from Israel's Academic Fifth Column is a
textbook that was about to be introduced into high school classrooms in
Israel, a book that gives .equal time. to Arab propaganda lies and to
factual history, in effect equating the legitimacy of truth with fiction.
It has pages split in half on one side of which it gives the 'Jewish
version,' meaning historic facts, and on the other side it gives the 'Arab
version,' meaning the usual set of disinformation and lies. About the
'Nakba,' about Jews supposedly carrying out ethnic cleansing of Arabs in
1948, and so on. For details see this story in Haaretz:
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1116086.html

Now the authors of this .book. may be onto something. How about after
junking their piece of trash a new textbook is introduced to Israeli high
schools in which both sides of the following questions are debated in the
same split-page format?: Should Israeli Leftists be stripped of their
citizenship and deported and jailed and hanged from the gallows as
traitors? The book could offer arguments pro and con in a balanced and
even-handed manned on pages split in half.

You know, all for the sake of balance and pluralism and hearing both
sides!

2. Subject: Interesting Piece on Israel's Far Left from Far Leftist
anti-Zionist
Haaaretz, of all Places

Left, right, left
By Ari Shavit
Haartez (Hebrew original 11/9/09?)

Shmuel Hasfari is a well-known playwright. Eldad Yaniv is a well-known
political strategist and deal-maker. They joined forces two years ago to
create a well-known local television hero, Polishuk. For hours on end
Yaniv would tell Hasfari how Israeli politics works, and Hasfari turned
the stories into the highly tragicomic TV series. But when the laughter
was over Hasfari and Yaniv sat down and asked themselves whether they
could continue to live with Israel's government in its present form, with
public discourse in Israel as it was being conducted. They asked whether
there was something they could do to shake up the system and compel it to
become serious and genuine.

The outcome is a 15,000-word document that was unleashed earlier this
month into the crowded, tired public arena. It is called "The National
Left," but in a sense its real name could be "Anti-Polishuk." It is an
attempt to restore values to a politics that has lost all values, to
restore an agenda to a politics that has lost any agenda, to wage a war of
ideas in a place where political wars are driven by personal and partisan
interests and motivated by cynicism.

Hasfari, 55, is a natural candidate for the task. By the age of 17 he
belonged to the extreme right-wing organization Dov (an acronym for dikui
bogdim, suppression of traitors). At 30, he was far enough to the left to
already left enough to be a refusenik in the Lebanon War, and since the
early 1980s he has been writing plays focusing on the tensions and forces
in Israeli society. In 1996, he worked on the prime ministerial election
campaign of Shimon Peres, who was running against Benjamin Netanyahu. In
1999 he worked for Meretz during the election. He has always walked a
tightrope between writing and politics, and says that were he not a
playwright he would be a politician.

Yaniv was Ehud Barak's closest political advisor from 1999 to 2001, and in
2002-2006 he was legal counsel for the Labor Party. He returned to work
for Barak, who by then was defense minister, in 2006-2007, as his campaign
chief and as head of the defense minister's personal staff. He was known
as a supreme schemer, a superior manipulator, an indefatigable and slick
political operator. Not exactly the man to offer a new ideological path
for the Israeli left.

Nevertheless, the document Yaniv and Hasfari drafted in evening meetings
over a full year is provocative and fascinating. Many of its ideas are
drawn from the writings and statements of others, yet their collection
into a direct, blunt and provocative text has resonance. It has been a
long time since leftists have attacked the left so directly, in an attempt
to rouse it from its slumbers. Fasten your seat belts: turbulence ahead.

Rumors of my death

You are a playwright. What's your connection to ideological treatises?

Hasfari: "At some point there was a sudden rush to the right. The
conventional wisdom said the left was finished. I felt that as a leftist I
wasn't dead, that the rumors of my death were wrong. I tried to understand
this dissonance and realized there was a very great confusion, a
corruption of concepts and definitions. The fact that I love the State of
Israel and the Land of Israel and the people here does not make me a
rightist. The fact that I am not in love with Yasser Arafat does not mean
that I am not left. Left is something else entirely. Left is being
socially concerned, empathetic. Left is asking what is unjust, un-Jewish
and immoral in our society. But in recent years the impression has been
created here that left means being spineless, universalist, not bound to
anything. Left is tending to the beds of basil of 'the State of Tel Aviv.'
So I wanted to declare that the fact that my children serve in the army
does not mean that I am not left. I am not post-Zionist; I am Zionist
Zionist. I believe that this is my country, my homeland, the place where I
should raise my children. I believe that Zionism is an amazing enterprise.
I believe that Zionism is the correct and important solution for the Jews
in our time. I am a red-blooded patriot."

A leftist can be a red-blooded patriot?

"It isn't because everyone has suddenly turned right, but because the left
has become confused. The left stopped being what it was and what it needs
to be. That is why we wrote this document. We wrote it to wake people up,
to shock people, to shock the left back to life."

Eldad Yaniv, you are a political deal-maker. What's your connection to
ideological treatises? You are a practical, savvy, sophisticated person.
When people see what you are doing, they ask what game you are playing. So
what's your game?

Your text really is meant to shake things up. You call the left "small" (a
play on the Hebrew word for left, "smol"). You write: "The left is a mark
of Cain, a derogatory term for collaborator, Israel-hating Arab-lover,
enemy of the Jewish people, unpatriotic, "kapo," braggart."

"After all, it is unacceptable that for every incident at some [West Bank]
checkpoint this 'small' sends tons of user responses to Haaretz and Ynet
[Internet sites], but on [the refusal of religious schools in Petah Tikva
to admit children of Ethiopian descent], this 'small' is silent. Have you
heard Jumas [Meretz MK and New Movement-Meretz chairman Haim Oron] say
anything about the Ethiopians? Have you heard [former Labor and Meretz
leader] Yossi Beilin say anything about the Ethiopians? Nada. It is of no
interest to them, it goes right over their heads. This proves that they
are not a true left, because you cannot be left without showing
solidarity. There's no such thing as a left that does not first of all
concern itself with its community. So this 'small' is no longer left. It
is an alienated individualism. Beilinism has taken it over entirely."

What do you two have against Beilinism?

Yaniv: "Beilin is part of the peace industry. His core business is
achieving peace. Therefore Beilinism is one-dimensional. But we are saying
that the left is not peace and that peace is not left. Because what if it
is not possible to achieve peace? Ben-Gurion did not get peace in his
lifetime, but he was left. Because left is to aspire to create an
exemplary society here. But all of these Jumases cannot be with the
Ethiopians in Petah Tikva, because they've been overwhelmed by the peace
industry. And the peace industry is flying abroad every day to conferences
with the Palestinians, and deep down it hopes that will not be peace
because if there is there will no more trips abroad. This industry can
function only when there is no peace. The Peres Center for Peace can
function only when there is no peace. Can you imagine what would happen if
there were peace? It would be a catastrophe for them."

Yaniv: "We aren't saying Israel should not strive for peace, it should.
But what if there is never peace? The left must say that the country has
to be divided even if there isn't going to be peace - and that an
exemplary society should be founded here even if there isn't going to be
peace. The left should go back to being a nationalist left."

Slackers and parasites

The nationalist left you refer to savagely attacks those who evade
conscription. That sounds more right wing than left wing.

Hasfari: "Draft evaders are people who steal from the national treasury.
We had a contract: I protected you, now you protect me. Why are you
betraying this pact? By what right do you send my son to the army while
you stay at home in Tel Aviv getting laid? By what right are you an actor,
playing a soldier in "Beaufort," and not going to the army to be a
soldier? By what right? Are there no more wars? Do we no longer need an
army? Are there no more national missions?"

You're really angry. Draft dodgers make your blood boil.

Hasfari: "It drives me crazy. The evaders are revolting parasites. They
are shits. They are do- nothings, cheaters and shits."

Hasfari: "Evading service is treason, absolutely. It's very simple. We are
carrying a stretcher, four guys, and suddenly one decides it's okay to
leave. And when he leaves the injured man falls. What is unclear here? An
evader is a traitor. He violates a contract. I had a contract with him and
he violated it."

The bloggers will call you both fascists.

Hasfari: "A fascist is someone who puts the state above all else. We
aren't talking about the state at all, we're talking about society, about
me and you. My neighbor and I agreed that I would guard on Sunday and he
will guard on Monday. But on Sunday I guard and on Monday he's out having
a good time. And in so doing he is betraying me. He violated our contract.
There is no fascism here, only deception.

"I'll give you an example: A young guy doesn't feel like going to the
army. Instead he went to Beit Zvi (acting school). He told the army that
he wasn't suited to frameworks and to discipline, but he went to a school
that is all about frameworks and discipline. He graduated, became a big
star and portrays soldiers, and will soon be portraying a Nazi officer.
He's willing to play a soldier, but not to be one. It makes my blood boil.
I will never work with him."

Hasfari: "I am talking about Itay Tiran and others, too, and in my view
there is a connection. Because in my view a draft dodger is stealing money
from my pocket. I watched over you when you were little, now I need you to
watch over me, so you evade your responsibility and disappear and become a
stage actor? It's immoral, it's tainted. When I choose actors I do not
work with draft evaders, just as I would not work with a thief, a rapist,
a murderer."

No rights without duties

Basically you are saying that army service - preferably combat duty,
meaningful duty - is a condition for being a leftist.

Yaniv: "Every leftist should be the first to go to the army. It's no
accident that [Revisionist Zionist and Irgun leader Ze'ev] Jabotinsky died
in New York and Ben-Gurion died in Israel. We were always at the front. It
can't be any other way. We leftists will always need to pay a higher price
because we are more sensitive to our duties to the community."

You did your army service at Bamahane, the army journal. Your front was
Tel Aviv.

Yaniv: "An Israeli passport isn't enough? Why should a person need two
passports?"

Hasfari: "Because he's a Jew-boy. He's imagining how it all ends, and
working his way back from there."

Did I hear you correctly? Jew-boy?

You argue that civil rights should be bound up with civil obligations.
You're anti-liberal.

Yaniv: "That statement is really not simple. It is very, very illiberal.
But what can you do when the State of Israel is illiberal? This is a
democratic Jewish state. This is not an ordinary democracy. This is a
democracy in which there is discrimination that favors Jews."

Civil rights are a fundamental, universal, unconditional value.

Hasfari: "We live in the same society, in the same entity. So if you won't
give, you won't receive. If you give the minimum, I'll also give you the
minimum. You won't get an allowance."

Hasfari: "I would stay awake until four in the morning to see Israel's
youth team playing in blue and white against a team of Maoris in
Australia. Why? Because. Because they represent me, because I stand behind
them, because they are part of me and I am part of them. And when I see
the flag raised to the top of the pole between Memorial Day and
Independence Day, I get emotional. Because this flag is us. This flag is
ours. It is not David's and not Abraham's and not Maimonides'. It's our
flag. We drew it with our own hands, and in my view, 'Hatikva' is the most
beautiful national anthem in the world. The beautiful, melancholic music
of 'Hatikva.' That evocative, semi-sad music, full of hope and yearning.
And its wonderful text. 'Hatikva' is me, it is part of me."

But 'Hatikva' excludes one-fifth of Israel's citizens, who cannot sing
"the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart."

Hasfari: "I'm not demanding that any Arab stand to attention and sing when
'Hatikva' is played, but Israel is not a nation of all its citizens. There
is a country here that was established to be a Jewish state, and the
anthem reflects the aim of its establishment. I am not ashamed of that,
but proud of it."

I listen to you both and have reached the conclusion that you are not
rightist, because you want to end the occupation and get out of the
territories. But you are really not liberal left, either. You are
nationalists of the Green Line.

Hasfari: "Green Line nationalists sounds fine to me. I am not apologetic
about my country, about its borders or the Green Line, which has been
recognized by the entire world. This is where I live, this is my country.
Green Line nationalists? I'll accept that, absolutely. Sign me up."

National left sounds a bit like National Socialist (Nazi). What's more,
the language you employ is blunt, provocative, vulgar. It smells of
populism.

Hasfari: "Our language is not inflated, not the language of 'small.' We
wrote without question marks. Without 'it is possibles.' Basically what we
are saying here is what people usually say off the record. We wrote an
off-the-record text and decided to put it on the record."

Wake up, psychos

Not only is your language populist, but so is your Zionism. At the end of
the day your solution to occupation is the unilateral solution. But
unilateralism was tried in the Gaza disengagement and failed.

Hasfari: "The problem with the disengagement wasn't the disengagement, it
was with our response following the disengagement. We are a sovereign
state, damn it. Anyone who harms a sovereign state will pay the price for
his actions. Can there be any question about that? You don't have to be
[Foreign Minister and Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor] Lieberman for
that. For that, you don't have to be a fascist. He who hurts me will be
hurt, immediately. You don't wait for seven years to respond."

In other words, as far as you are concerned the problem is not Operation
Cast Lead. The problem is that Cast Lead was so long in coming.

Yaniv: "The strategy is to partition the land. There is no other strategy.
Withdraw and build a fence. And then, anyone who shoots at you will be hit
hard, without mercy, as in Cast Lead. If you are hit by Qassams you have
to strike back, blows to the head, without mercy. Without B'Tselem,
without Peace Now. With the launch of the first Qassam you have to strike
hard at Gaza without mercy and without blinking. If you are attacked you
respond with all your strength."

Hasfari: "We are very much in favor of the wall. And, if possible, of
making it higher, deeper."

Eldad, you oppose settlements and favor unilateral withdrawal, but you are
the attorney of the city of Ariel.

You have an ingenious solution, but one problem remains: (Advertising
executive) Reuven Adler came up with it first. He said that Israel should
leave the territories and strike hard at the Arabs, and he established a
party to that effect - Kadima. Why aren't you Kadima?

Yaniv: "Adler has a problem with its leader [MK Tzipi Livni]. She doesn't
tell the truth. She knows the truth and doesn't say it. And the truth is
that we should partition the land. Even if there's no partner, we should
partition the land. And evidently, there is no partner. So after 70
meetings with the Palestinians, from which nothing came and nothing will
come, Livni should already have figured it out and said so."

Okay, then (Vice Premier and Kadima MK) Haim Ramon, not Livni. You
basically wrote the Haim Ramon platform: Blunt, direct, simplistic and
populist.

Hasfari: "I think Haim Ramon is one of the smartest politicians in
Israel."

Yaniv: "Aside from the kiss, aside from the kiss. He deserves to be
slapped for the kiss." (In January 2007 Haim Ramon was convicted of
indecent behavior for kissing a 20-year-old soldier without her consent,
when he was justice minister.)

Hasfari: "A gorgeous 18-year-old blonde wraps herself around you and
thrusts her tongue at you. You'd have to be made of stone to resist that."

There's no way around it, you need a leader who will fly the flag of the
national left. If not Beilin or Livni, and apparently not Ramon either,
who's left? Barak?

Yaniv: "Actually, I think that if Barak would do in the territories what
he did in Lebanon, I would support him. I don't rule out the possibility
of Barak adopting the national left idea and running with it.

"In all honesty, there is no real plan of action here. No new party, no
new leader. We are simply throwing a ball out onto the field and hoping
that others will kick it around. We are proposing a road map for the left.
We are hoping to generate change, like that which Four Mothers [the
protest organization credited with applying the public pressure that led
to Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000] generated. On the bottom
line, what we are saying is only one thing: Wake up, psychos. Wake up
because you are the majority. If you do not wake up now this state is
liable to really slip out of our hands. Another minute and all of Israel
will look like Jerusalem. If the left does not join in, does not
understand that the holiday is over and does not come down from the
bleachers then Israel will simply become one big settlement."

3. The following is not a spoof or joke:

Subject: American Jewish "liturgy"

From an article on prayer in the September 20th NYTimes Magazine: "Reform
Judaism is nothing if not responsive to changing times. Recently its
liturgy incorporated a special prayer for people undergoing sex-change
operations. And a predominantly gay synagogue in San Francisco,
Congregation Sha'ar Zahav, has composed its own prayer to be said after
anonymous sex. 'In the dark, in a strange place, our father Jacob
encountered a stranger with whom he grappled all night . . . He never knew
that stranger's name, yet their encounter was a blessing which turned
Jacob into Israel and made him realize, I have seen God face to face.' The
prayer asks God . who created passion and wove it throughout creation . to
bless casual sex and turn it into a blessing that allows us to both touch
and see the Divine."

4. Trial and Power
By Dr. Emmanuel Navon
www.navon.com
I shall spare you the ordeal of playing the broken record on what was
wrong with the Oslo accords. Still: we're in between September 13 (the
date on which the Israeli Government and the PLO signed a Declaration of
Principles 16 years ago) and Rosh Hashanah, and there is something to be
learned about the Oslo legacy.

Oslo has been debated ad nauseam, and this debate is as tiresome as it is
irrelevant. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a Catch-22 situation. It
is both unsustainable and unsolvable. Most people, by now, realize that.
This conflict, however, is manageable -- provided Israel completes its
physical separation from the Palestinians, outsmarts them on the
diplomatic chessboard, and neutralizes their regional troublemaking
backers.

Peace, of course, would be preferable. But saying this is like saying that
it is preferable to be handsome, wealthy and bright than ugly, poor, and
dumb. Saying it does not make it happen. Moreover, it is a fact that
Israel has managed to thrive and be a success story despite the lack of
true peace.

Shimon Peres made the bizarre claim in this book The New Middle East
(published in the wake of the 1993 Oslo agreement) that "true power --
even military power -- is no longer anchored in the boot camp, but on the
university campuses." Though clumsily stated (I happen to doubt the
ability of our academic nerds to protect us from an Iranian nuclear bomb),
Peres' idea contains an element of truth. What is anchored on Israeli
university campuses, however, is not true power, but true weakness.

I have had the privilege of teaching in Israeli universities for the past
eight years, and have always been struck by the fact that my students are
confused when I ask them to think. This confusion confirms what I
experienced as a graduate student in Israel. We were asked to learn, but
not to think. To repeat, not to be critical. All the professors were on
the same political wavelength (guess which one), and they did manage to
produce formatted and dogmatic students that knew their field but had no
culture and critical mind. Israeli campuses introduced me to something
new: intellectually boring Jews.

Faced with uncritical and ignorant 20-somethings who just finished the
army and only care about getting a degree and a job, Israel's most radical
professors have it easy. And what they have to say hardly makes our
universities a source of national strength: Young Israeli residents of
Judea and Samaria are like the Hitlerjungen (Moshe Zimmerman, Hebrew
University); Israel's policy toward the Palestinians is one of politicide
(Baruch Kimmerling, Hebrew University) and ethnic cleansing (Ilan Papp.,
formerly from Haifa University); the very existence of a Jewish people is
a "myth" invented by Zionism (Shlomo Sand, Tel-Aviv University); there
never was a unified Israelite monarchy in biblical times (Israel
Finkelstein, Tel-Aviv University); Israel is an apartheid state that
should be boycotted by the world community (Neve Gordon, Ben-Gurion
University), etc.

In a way, Peres was right: Israel's future depends not only on the
vitality of our economy and on the strength of our army but also, indeed
mostly, on what young Israelis know about their past and think of their
country -- in other words on the ideas they encounter on campuses. This is
where Israelis and Diaspora Jews must concentrate their efforts in the
coming years. The Shalem Center's initiative to set-up an alternative,
College-type institution in Israel is a good start in order for our
country to survive its academic nuts.

Ideas, values and faith transcend physical death. The fate of the Ramon
family is here to prove it. Ilan Ramon's mother was a survivor of the
Auschwitz concentration camp. Although he was a secular Jew, Ilan sought
to follow Jewish observances while in orbit (he requested kosher food and
observed Shabbat in space). Ilan also took parts of Jewish history and
faith with him in space: A pencil sketch, "Moon Landscape", drawn by
14-year-old Petr Ginz, who died in Auschwitz; a microfiche copy of a Torah
Scroll saved from the Holocaust; a barbed wire Mezuzah designed by Aimee
Golant; and a landmark dollar of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. "I feel I am
representing all Jews and all Israelis" he said.

Both Ilan and his son Assaf tragically died while heroically serving their
country, but they are survived by the values and ideas they believed in
and fought for.

May we be up to the task of preserving and perpetuating those values and
ideas. And may the Year 5770 give us the opportunity to do so without the
trials of the Year 5769.

Subject: Prof. Uriel Reichman (IDC) speaks out against Israel's Academic Fifth Column

Speech from
ICT's 9th International Conference - Closing Evening
10 September 2009
Prof. Uriel Reichman President of IDC
 
 
 The plan to terminate the Jewish state is no longer based on winning one major allout
war. The planned strategy is based on two long-term operations. One is a
continuous, low intensity, violent campaign. Such terror acts directed at civilians are
aimed to break the citizens' will-power and to cause internal debates and chaos.
The other part of the strategy is taking place abroad. Activities aimed at spreading
hatred against Israeland arguing that the Jewish state has no right to exist are
taking place daily. Such as, for example, the claims that Israelis an apartheid state,
a colonial state, a racist entity, a society that faked its history to claim rights to a land
that does not belong to it, and so on. By doing so, public opinion is built to demand
boycotts against Israel, to start criminal proceedings against I.D.F. commanders, to
move governments and several nations to impose sanctions on Israeland finally,
perhaps, to call international military activity against us.
It is a sophisticated process that can be especially effective against a small nation.
Substantial Arab resources are poured into accomplishing these results, buying all
kinds of media and funding anti-Israel organizations. There is no doubt that innocent
people are caught by the emotional, as well as ideological, propaganda against
Israel.
The most extreme allegations against Israelare often made by a small anti-Zionist
group of Israeli university professors. Their ideas are widely circulated and are
especially effective because they are made by Israelis. Recently, in an article
published in the Los Angeles Times, an Israeli professor called his audience to
boycott Israelon all levels, to "save that apartheid state from itself."
How should a university respond to such writing? Is it a case of constitutionally
protected free speech or academic freedom? There is a difference between internal
democratic debate, what course should a nation adopt, when being called in for
sanctions by other countries. The professor who wrote the L.A.article would
probably support the use of international military forces, in case the sanctions fail its
"save Israelfrom itself" campaign. Calling other nations to take action against your
own country - be it by economic sanctions or military force â€" means turning your
back on the internal democratic system. Such an attitude is morally right only if you
believe that the situation has reached a point in which the system has entirely lost its
legitimacy and thus merits revolt. If that is the case, it is very odd that such a
professor is requiring a salary from a state university funded by the tax payers'
money.
Freedom of speech is guaranteed to enable free debate in a society; it does not
extend to calls for force, which will actually terminate debates. Such calls have also
nothing to do with academic freedom. It is a joke to regard a call for academic
boycott as being part of academic freedom.
The paradox of modern communication is that fundamentalist calls for the
annihilation of one people are supported by arguments of self-proclaimed Human
Rights moralists. What we all need is the power to face evil, and the human decency
to distinguish between right and wrong, oppose the call to eliminate the other and
support the right of self-defense and freedom.
In eight days, the Jewish New Year starts. Let me wish all of you Shana Tova â€" a
Happy New Year, a year free of violence, a year of joy and creativity.Thank you for attending the conference.

http://samsonblinded.org/blog/goldstone-report-the-rebuttal.htm?clientid=1621

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/boot/96122

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c40_a16771/News/Israel.html

http://www.feuj.org/go-news-18760.php

1. Selichos for the Oslo Left
by Steven Plaut

The Israeli and American Jewish supporters of Oslo have been asked to say
special Selichos prayers this year in light of the terrible catastrophes
inflicted upon Israel by the policies they have forced upon the country.

The new Oslo Selichos go something like this:

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
the world that Arafat would pursue peace,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
the world that Hamas would be more of a threat to the PLO than to Israel,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
the Jews that Arafat would fight the Hamas and Islamic Jihad with no
Supreme Court or Betselem (to quote Rabin),
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that hostility to Jews in the Arab and the Moslem media would
decrease,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
the Israelis that trade between Israel and Arab countries would flourish,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel us that the Palestinian Authority would be disarmed,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the PLO would cooperate strategically with the Israeli Defense
Force,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel there would be an economic peace dividend,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that Israeli Arabs would demonstrate increasing moderation due to
the "peace process,
Please forgive us..

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the Hamas and Jihad would be persecuted and suppressed by the
PLO,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that PLO arms would never again be used against Jews,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the PLO leadership would speak in terms of peace with the
Jews,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the PLO would cease its efforts to delegitimize Zionism and
Israel,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel the PLO would denounce and renounce anti-Semitism, Nazism and
Holocaust Denial,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the PLO would introduce democracy into the Palestinian zones,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the PLO would be forced to spend all its energies on resolving
domestic social and economic problems,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the US would back Israel if the PLO reneged on its obligations
or displayed duplicity,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the US would cease to pressure Israel to endanger its security
and fundamental interests,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the Europeans would rush forward to support Israel,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the Japanese and Saudis would pour money into regional
investments, including into Israel,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the Egyptians would end all animosity towards Israel, Zionism
and Jews,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the non-Arab Moslem countries would gush friendship for
Israel,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that Arab military expenditure would drop significantly,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that Arab verbal threats against Israel's existence would end,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that Nazi-like propaganda in Arab countries would end,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the Israeli Left would lead the retreat from the Oslo
experiment it if proved to be not working,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the PLO would never show itself as a tin-cup Third-World
kleptocracy if granted power,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that Jews remaining in Moslem countries would see their treatment
dramatically improved,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that Russia would act as a stabilizing force for peace,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that the majority of Palestinians would denounce violence and
terror,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that Israel Arabs would cease to support political parties
dedicated to eliminating Israel,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured
Israel that Palestinian chants of In Fire and Blood will We Redeem
Palestine, "Death to the Jews", and "Massacre the Jews" would end,
Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we assured the world that Oslo would NEVER
lead to demands for negotiations concerning Israeli sovereignty over
Jerusalem, that Israel would never be asked to return to its 1949
Auschwitz borders, that the Jordan Valley, and Golan Heights would remain
Israel's security borders forever,

Please please please forgive us!!

2. More on the Campus Pogroms against the Jews:
http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/2712/the-campus-war-against-israel-and-the-jews

3. UCLA.s ex-Israeli pogromchik:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20StandWithUs%20-%20Gabriel%20Piterberg.htm
4. Israel.s Academic Fifth Column rallies for Gordon.s call for a boycott
against Israel:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Petitions%20-%20Israeli%20Academics%20support%20Neve%20Gordon%20and%20join%20the%20BDS.htm

5. Lord Haw Haw of Exeter:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Ilan%20Pappe%20-%20exports%20hatred%20and%20lies.htm

6. The UN.s Blood Libel (by Dersh):
http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36325

7. J Street = Traitors 'R Us (An Anthology of articles exposing J
Street):
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/40791

WHOSE SIDE IS J STREET REALLY ON?

By: Morton Klein

Date: Wednesday, September 16 2009
Is J Street a pro-Israel group? The lobbying organization never tires of
claiming it is.

Yet what pro-Israel group would invite a man to speak at its forthcoming
conference who has called for Israel's destruction, stating that "the
establishment by force, violence and terrorism of a Jewish state in
Palestine in 1948" was "unjust" and "a crime," and vowed to "work to
overturn the injustice"?

The man who signed this Sept. 17, 1993 statement by the Muslim Public
Affairs Council was its executive director, Salam Al-Marayati, who will be
speaking next month at J Street's Oct. 25-28 conference.

Marayati and MPAC have made numerous other hateful anti-Israel and
anti-American statements:

. A few hours after the 9/11 attacks, Marayati said on a radio show in Los
Angeles, "We should put the State of Israel on the suspect list" of
possible 9/11 perpetrators.

. After a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem pizzeria on Aug. 8, 2001, his
organization issued a statement calling the attack "the expected bitter
result of the reckless policy of Israeli assassination that did not spare
children and political figures."

. Marayati's group condemned the U.S. strikes against al Qaeda in
Afghanistan and Sudan following the bombings in 1998 of the U.S. embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania as "illegal, immoral and illogical."

. He has likened Israel's supporters to Hitler.

Marayati also has condemned France's fining of Roger Garaudy for Holocaust
denial as "persecution of his right to express an opinion" and in 1997
gave a chilling, anticipatory justification for anti-American terrorism,
saying, "Where Israel goes, our government follows.... What is important
is whether the American people are aware of and ready for the
consequences."

Some of these statements caused Marayati's 1999 appointment to a U.S.
congressional committee on terrorism to be rescinded.

J Street's invitation to Marayati makes one wonder whose side the
organization is on.

J Street pressures Israel to make concessions, yet says virtually nothing
specifically about the 16-year failure of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian
Authority to dismantle terrorist groups. The lobby group also said nothing
about Fatah's recent conference, which proclaimed the legitimacy of
terrorism against Israel and honored, by name, killers of Jews as heroes.

Additionally, J Street showed its animus toward Israel by citing polls
inaccurately to bolster its claim that Israelis and American Jews want
greater Israeli concessions and agree with President Obama's pressure on
Israel to stop Jews building in eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria -
the land known as the West Bank.

In June, J Street's campaign director, Isaac Luria, misleadingly claimed,
"Israelis want the president to stand up to the settlers."

Luria said, "A poll recently showed that 52 percent of Israelis want a
freeze on settlement construction and 56 percent want Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu to agree to President Obama's call for an end to
settlement construction."

In fact, the Dahaf Institute poll to which Luria referred
actually showed that Israelis favor continued natural growth of Jewish
communities by 54 percent to 42 percent, and that they believe that
Obama's policies are not good for Israel by a margin of 53 percent to 26
percent.

J Street simply buried the evidence of actual support for natural growth
and cited only a contradictory general finding of support for a
construction freeze. More damning still, the only other partial truth in J
Street's claim - that 56 percent of respondents said they wanted Netanyahu
to agree to Obama's demands - left out the major point that they favored
this only if the alternative meant U.S. sanctions.

J Street misrepresents polling data and ignores other polls
that show majority Israeli and American Jewish opposition to Obama's
demands. For instance, a recent Smith Research Institute poll shows that
Israelis, by a decisive 69 percent to 27 percent margin, oppose freezing
construction within large Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and that
only 4 percent of Israelis favor Obama's policies.

Additionally, a July Global Marketing Services poll of American Jews who
are Democrats shows 55 percent believe Obama is naive in thinking
Palestinians want peace. Only 27 percent supported Obama's promoting of a
Palestinian state and 52 percent said Israel should be allowed to build in
existing settlements.

While the poll also showed that 58 percent of Jewish Democrats believe
Obama is "doing a good job promoting peace in the Middle East," the
question isn't specific to Israel and may include Obama's policies on
Iraq, Iran, Egypt, etc. The poll also showed 55 percent of respondents
believe Obama is not "too tough on Israel" - but they disagree with
Obama's specific policies on Israel, as other answers in the poll
indicate.

Most disturbing, despite strong support by most Israeli and American Jews
for Israel's campaign last January to stop Hamas rocket attacks, J Street
opposed the operation. It has even challenged the adoption of more robust
sanctions against Iran.

All these issues have enhanced relevance in view of the fact that J Street
receives tens of thousands of dollars in donations from dozens of Arab and
Muslim Americans, according to the Federal Election Commission filings
cited by the Jerusalem Post, as well as money from individuals connected
to Palestinian and pro-Iranian advocacy groups.