Zionist Conspiracy

1.  Oh dear.  The Tenured Left is upset again.  

 

See http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3875212,00.html

 

It seems that the Tzomet Sfarim book chain in Israel, the country's second largest chain, had been "selling" a leftist propaganda manifesto through its stores for 1 NIS each.  Some customers from the non-Left expressed indignation over that.  In the end the store chain decided to stop "selling" the drek. 

 

But that angered the tenured Left.  A group of Israel's port-side academics have started a petition calling for a national boycott against the store because it refuses to serve as a distribution mechanism for the Left's agitprop.  It is worth noting that many of the people signing this petition had previously signed petitions calling for a world boycott of all of Israel.  One signer was Naomi Chazan, chair-rhino of the New Israel Fund.  Several other signers have a long track record of calling for denying freedom of speech to Israeli Right-wingers while at the same time whining about critics of the Left being "McCarthyists."

 

Here is the full story (note the courageous talkbacks on the page, now that talkbackers in Israel can actually enjoy freedom of speech thanks to the Court).  By the way, leftwing YNET posted the entire "manifest" on its web site for free downloading to protest the "censorship" of the book chain (Hebrew only here:  http://my.ynet.co.il/pic/news/11042010/smol%20leumi.pdf ).

 

 

Petition: Boycott Tzomet Sfarim

Following Ynet exposure of bookstore chain's plans to remove political doctrine 'The National Left' from shelves, dozens of academics sign petition calling for boycott, say chain must be made to apologize, vow never to succumb to political pressures again
by Attila Somfalvi

The storm that followed bookstore chain Tzomet Sfarim's decision to stop selling the political doctrine "The National Left" after coming under pressure from rightist elements, has not subsided.

 Following hundreds of online comments to the affair, which was first published on Ynet, dozens of Israeli academics, doctors and professors signed a petition to boycott the bookstore chain.

"We the undersigned, academics, researches, and public figures, reject, with disgust, the decision of the Tzomet Sfarim's management to remove from its shelves the book: 'The National Left'," the petition reads.

 

Among the academics who signed the petition are law Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer, and political scientist Professor Yaron Ezrahi.

 "Removing any book from the bookshelves due to ideological-political pressure, is wrong and hurts the core of democracy, and constitutes an critical blow to the public's freedom of expression and freedom of choice.

"Tzomet Sfarim's succumbing to ideological-political pressure is a serious threat to the foundation of Israeli democracy."

 

The petition continues to say, "We therefore urge anyone who holds democracy dear, to go out and condemn the Tzomet Sfarim chain, and to apply pressure on it to return the book to its shelves. In addition, the chain's management should be demanded to apologize and commit that it will not remove books from its shelves due to ideological-political pressure in the future."

 

The chain's decision was revealed by Ynet on Sunday, and stirred the fury of the Israeli Left. Former Meretz Chairwoman Shulamit Aloni said in response that Israel has become a fascist and anti-democratic state, and said, "The settlers rule the land."

 Attorney Eldad Yaniv, one of the writers of the book told Ynet of the authors' creative response to the chain's decision: "We intend to take hundreds of thousands of copies left after they sold 5,000 in three days, and distribute them for free at the weekend on campuses and at universities."

 

 

 

2.  http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136976

 

The Truth about the Deir Yassin "Massacre"

 

Dir Yassin: Saga of Self-Damaging Propaganda

Nisan 29, 5770, 13 April 10 11:39

by Avi Yellin

(Israelnationalnews.com) The April 9 anniversary of the battle of Deir Yassin has been used yet again by anti-Israel activists around the world in attempts to malign the State of Israel and accuse pre-state Jewish underground groups of perpetrating a massacre against Deir Yassin's Arab residents during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Underground veterans and historians continue to refute these claims and expose them, ironically, as official Zionist propaganda.

In 1948, the British Mandate was in the process of withdrawing its forces from the country due to their inability to effectively combat Zionist guerilla groups such as the Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi) and the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization - Etzel), which had been steadfast in their determination to liberate the Jewish homeland.

In the months leading up to their evacuation, British forces handed arms and most of their key military positions to the Arab irregular forces they had trained and incited against the country's Jewish community. Among these important positions were several strategic vantage points along the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, which essentially cut off Jerusalem's supply route and entrapped the city's Jewish inhabitants.

By March 1948, the road was cut off and Jerusalem was under siege. In response, the Jewish Agency's official Haganah militia launched Operation Nachshon to break the siege. On April 6, in an effort to secure strategic positions, the Haganah successfully took the al-Qastal village overlooking the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.

Deir Yassin was located on the western tip of modern day municipal Jerusalem and two kilometers south of al-Qastal, overlooking the western entrance to the capital. On April 9, about 120 members of Lehi and Etzel, in coordination with the Haganah, attacked Deir Yassin and, following a fierce battle, succeeded in taking the strategic hill.

Although initially commended for their victory in battle, the Jewish fighters of Deir Yassin were soon accused of perpetrating a massacre by the official Jewish Agency leadership in what many view today to have been a political attempt to malign the Etzel commander, Menachem Begin.

The accusations quickly spread to Arab and foreign media circles, prompting a mass flight of Arabs from other areas of the country. According to new historian Benny Morris and Yisrael Eldad (another historian who served as Lehi's ideological leader), the panicked Arab flight was most important immediate effect of the Deir Yassin battle and the exaggerated media campaign that had followed it.

Both Lehi and Etzel have officially denied that an organized massacre took place at Deir Yassin. Both organizations asserted that the battle had been characterized by heavy fighting and that their troops were under fire from rifles and machine guns from almost every house. Both also pointed out the relatively high rate of their own casualties (attributed to the fact that they had deliberately forsworn the advantages of surprise by issuing a warning via loudspeaker prior to the attack), the large number of weapons they had captured from fallen Arabs, the number of Iraqi and Syrian soldiers among the casualties, which indicated that there were "units of the regular army encamped there."

All Jewish veterans of the battle, including several Lehi militants on the Left, have consistently denied that a massacre took place. Even anti-Zionist activist Uri Avnery maintains that is friend, Lehi veteran and pro-Arab journalist Amos Kenan, always asserted that a massacre at Deir Yassin had never taken place and that even if it did, it was completely unintentional.

Lehi veteran Ezra Yakhin, who was wounded during the battle of Deir Yassin, offers a detailed eleven page account of the events in  the book Elnakam – his memoirs from the period. In it, he attributes the high number of Arab civilian casualties to confusion created by Arab soldiers dressed as women and the killing of several Lehi and Etzel fighters early in the battle. Yakhin asserts that the rumors indicating that a massacre took place only began surfacing once the fighters had returned home and that they were being spread by the official Zionist establishment in order to defame the underground fighters, specifically the Etzel which the Jewish Agency leaders saw as a potential threat to their political power.

Israeli military historian Uri Milstein supports the Lehi and Etzel assertion that there was never an organized massacre at Deir Yassin, although he acknowledges a high number of civilian casualties. He regards the Haganah intelligence reports to have been doctored, either by the authors or later by their superiors, in an attempt to exaggerate the violence and blacken the names of the Etzel and Lehi due to political in-fighting within the Jewish community.

Milstein argues that the killings were typical of war and confirms Yakhin's claim that the notion of a massacre was a myth created by the Jewish Agency to prevent unification of the Haganah and Etzel, and in particular to prevent the Etzel's commander, Menahem Begin, from taking office in Israel's first national unity government under David Ben-Gurion.

Historians and experts continue to note the irony that propaganda originating with the Zionist establishment to malign political opponents has become a central theme in the information war to delegitimize the State of Israel as a whole. David Ben-Gurion's own propaganda weapon is now being used by Zionism's enemies in an attempt to destroy everything that Ben-Gurion established.