Friday, January 08, 2010

Ophir Pines takes a Hike

 

Questions:  Quick.  On which Israeli national holiday did Ophir Pines resign from politics?

Answer:  Any day in which Ophir Pines resigns from politics is an Israeli national holiday!

   Ophir Pines is a politician whom I really love to hate.  He is an obnoxious leftist McCarthyist.  He led the Labor Party's campaign against freedom of speech for anti-Oslo dissidents.  After the Rabin assassination, Pines led each and every Labor Party attempt to indict members of the political opposition for supposedly being collectively guilty of Rabin's death, and he led the camp claiming that exercise of freedom of speech by Right-wingers was what ultimately produced the Rabin assassination.  He repeatedly filed court petitions against Righists expressing opinions.
 
    Pines was considered until yesterday, when he resigned from the Knesset, to be the up-and-coming Young Turk, the Bonnie Prince Churly, and next-generation-leader of the Labor Party.  He had come in at the very top of Labor Party internal primaries.  This – in spite of his total absence of charisma and his lack of any sense of humor.  Pines looks like a young Montgomery Burns, and has yet to be seen cracking a smile.
 
   "Pines" is actually a common name for German Jews.  It is however pronounced in German and Hebrew, and I kid you not about this, "Penis."   Some members of the clan spell the name as it sounds, making their peace with the jokes.  Others, including young Ophir, prefer the PG spelling - PINES.   In any case, his name is pronounced Offer Penis, and for many years I respond to anyone mentioning his name with, "Sure, just not my own."  Wouldn't it be cool if he had married a woman named Fanny Prostate?
 
   So just what induced Prince Penis to abandon the Labor Party?  I think the answer is pretty clear.  Rodents never stay aboard sinking ships.  The Labor Party has sunk from a hegemonic single-party ruling class, running the state all on its own, to squeezing into the last Knesset as the 4th largest power.  It is possibly about to split into two even smaller splinters.  The Labor Party has very simply been completely wrong about nearly every single matter on which it has taken a public stand.  First and foremost, of course, the Labor Party bears direct responsibility for the Oslo debacle and all the existential damage it has done to the Jewish people.  Pines completely supports all of that, but he can see that the Labor shiplet is a-sinkin. 
 

      Whether the Labor Party's urological young leader is really out of politics for keeps remains to be seen.  I am skeptical that he will find working for a living as much fun as sitting in the parliament.  But meanwhile, I dug up some old postings of my own about him, some rather old, and attach them below.  So for Shabbat Shemot, I recommend filling up the Kiddish cup one extra time and toasting the exodus from the Knesset of Ophir Phallus!

 

 

This was posted on 12/26/2004 :

Well it is now official. The new Minister of the Interior in the new
coalition of appeasement to be composed of the Likud and the Labor Party
will include Ophir Pines as the Minister of the Interior. This is one of
the more powerful cabinet slots because the Minister is in charge of all
allotments of finances to local authorities. He also is in charge of
things like immigration rules and population registration (such as
registering gay "marriages".)

This is atrocious for several reasons. Pines is arguably the most
openly contemptuous Labor Party politician regarding free speech and
democracy. He has filed motions with the authorities regularly and
frequently, trying to urge the police and prosecution to indict and
investigate anyone who happens to disagree with the Left, include Rabbis
and journalists and other politicians
(http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=ArticlePage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article^l2885&enZone=Politics&enVersion=0&
and http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.12.05/news8.treason.html and
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=160353&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
and
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer&cid=1094959652453&p=1078027574097
). He has made it his special cause to try to get the authorities to
persecute Rabbis (http://middleeastinfo.org/article.php?sid=3690 ) and
"Women in Green" and similar anti-Oslo protest groups.

Pines is an anti-democratic McCarthyist who
has even called for indicting Ariel Sharon for exercising his freedom
of speech (http://www.israeleconomy.org/opeds/oped6.htm ). He was the
leading spokesman for the "Netanyahu was guilty of Rabin's
assassination" school of McCarthyism
(http://www.netaxs.com/home/r/afsi/OUTPOST/97NOV/nov2.htm).
He was one of the main promoters of the anti-democratic doctrine of
"judicial activism" by which non-elected judges can trump laws passed by
the elected representatives of the people
(http://www.irac.org/article_e.asp?artid=193 ). He has campaigned against
Sharon's security wall
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer&cid=1088566588655&p=1078027574097
)

Moreover, Pines is one of the dumbest people in Israeli
politics. He tried to initiate a constitutional change making it an
automatic entitlement to receive large welfare handouts from the government
(http://www.iasps.org/nbn/nbn463e.htm). He has been the father of some
equally dumb things.

The appointment does have one humorous side and that is Pines' name.
Ophir Pines is actually pronounced "Offer Penis". Really! (I usually
respond to hearing his name mentioned by saying Sure but not mine.)

In one of God's funnier moments of humor, "Penis" was a common name for
German Jews, and in Germany it did not carry the phallic connotations you
are all chuckling over. In fact there were a number of famous Rabbis with
the name, and if I am not mistaken they were even "Cohanim". In Germany
and in Hebrew you can write the name in a way that does not cause us all
to snicker like junior high kids. Most of the Jews with the name spell it
"Pines" when using Latin letters or addressing English speaking audiences,
for obvious reasons, although a few courageous ones use the alternative
and phenon-correct spelling. Some Jews also changed the pronunciation to
sound like the Ponderosas.  The kind with the cones on them, not the kind
Bill showed Monica.

So the Ariel Sharon's national unity caper is about to impose a Minister
Pines upon us. And we will no doubt get endless laughs from all this (can
someone pass on the info to Leno and Letterman?), every time he steps up
to propose a new persecution of non-leftists exercising their freedom of
speech. And every such act of McCarthyism should trigger demands that
Sharon circumcise his cabinet of this minister!

And cut down the Ponderosa!

 

Posted 2/01/2005  


The chief McCarthyist of the Labor Party and now Ariel Sharon's
Minister of the Interior, Ophir Pines, has announced that accountants at
his ministry will open an investigation into the question of "who financed"
the large mass demonstration this week against the Sharon-Mitzna
capitulation plan for Gaza. Never mind that his Ministry has no authority
over such questions.

And what questions are not interesting enough for Comrade Pines to
investigate?
Well, like, who is financing all those picayune far-Left organizations
in Israel with almost no members but money for huge full-page ads and big
billboards? Like who pays for Yossi Beilin's shenanigans? Like who pays
for Ami Ayalon's PR stunts? Like who finances Israel's Lord Haw-Haw, Uri
Avnery? Who pays for those "international solidarity" hooligans? Who
finances "Peace Now"? Who pays for those propaganda anti-Israel speaking
trips of Israel's tenured traitors?

None of these items interest Comrade Pines.

 

Nov 8, 2004:  The Israeli Labor Party's chief anti-free-speech McCarthyist has a
peace proposal:
Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor) called on Sharon to allow Arafat to be
buried in the Temple Mount.

http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/142002f.asp
The top Al Aqsa terrorist has told USA Today, all Al Aqsa terrorist
attacks against Israeli civilians come from Yasser Arafat.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0lo90
Senior Fatah Leaders Describe Arafat's Link to Terrorism

Since the Temple Mount is the most holy site in the world for Jews, we
might learn from this that Ophir in fact worships Arafat.

 

 

Pines on Minister Friedmann's campaign against judicial activism (from http://phillyafsi.com/issues.html):

 

The rhetoric of the court's political allies has been even less temperate. "Friedmann is carrying out an assassination of the Supreme Court and its head," bellowed voluble Labor Party MK Ophir Paz-Pines, "[resulting in] contempt of the court and damage to public confidence in the institution of justice. They contain harsh tones of populist incitement …that cause irreparable damage to the judicial system in Israel." Paz-Pines pointedly ignored the possibility that part and parcel of the "contempt" he cited stemmed not from Friedmann's actions but from the fact that 54 percent of the Israelis recently polled by Jerusalem-based Market Watch consider the Israeli justice system to be corrupt.


# posted by Steven Plaut : 5:30 AM




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