Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Obama Megilla - a.k.a. the Tikkun Megilla of Meaning

1. For all my fellow rednecks: Texas Swing version of Hava Nagila:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WF6irnzAiI


2. As you know, President Obama likes to go through the motions of
commemorating Jewish holidays in the White House, like lighting
Channuka candles.

Well. We bring you here the Obama-DNC version of the Scroll of Esther for Purim:


Chapter I


And it came to pass in the third year of the reign of Achashverosh,
King
of Persia, that the King threw a great party. And it was during that

party, that the King became intoxicated and called for his wife
Vashti
to come dance naked in front of the guests. Now, Vashti was a
liberated
woman, and was not at all ashamed to display her body in public ("my

body, my choice," she used to say). But she was certainly not going
to
do so at the behest of a male chauvinist like her husband. So she
refused to appear, and the following morning, in addition to a major

hangover, Achashverosh had one royal-size sexual harassment suit
waiting
for him. Public opinion quickly turned against the King, and he was
forced to settle out of court for an undisclosed sum of money.

Chapter II

It was after those events that the King missed Vashti, and wanted to

find a new wife. He consulted his inner circle of advisors, which,
in
accordance with multi-cultural practices, consisted of, among
others,
one woman, one Indian, one Ethiopian, and one handicapped person,
who
was also rumored to be gay. One of his advisors, Memoochan,
suggested
holding a beauty contest, attended by all the fairest maidens in the

land. But his female advisor informed him that Memoochan was a
Neanderthal living in the dark ages, and that beauty contests where
men
gawk at women walking around in swimsuits had long ago gone out of
fashion. Instead, she suggested giving a test in such subjects as
physics, literature and music, and the most intelligent woman would
be
made queen. And the King, already lagging in the public opinion
polls,
had no choice, and he said to make it so.

Now it just so happened that in the Kingdom of Persia there lived a
young Jewish girl named Esther who was very beautiful, but much more

importantly, had a 195 IQ. Having successfully sued her parents for
termination of custody, she had been living with her uncle
Mordechai.
Esther aced the test and was chosen to be the new queen. Only, the
homosexual community objected the word "queen," and the feminists
didn't
like the whole gender-based title thing, so it was decided that she
would just be called "Royal Person." So Esther was crowned Royal
Person
of Persia and was married to King Achashverosh, though she kept her
own
last name. And being that Esther was an intelligent woman in her own

right, and had no intention whatsoever of sitting quietly next to
the
King looking pretty, she was given her own staff of 15 and an office
in
the west wing of the palace.

Chapter III

It was after those events that King Achashverosh elevated his
advisor
Haman to be his chief advisor. There were some protests by the
African-Persian community because he hadn't selected an African
Persian
to be his top advisor, by the appointment went through anyway. It
turned
out the Haman was a big anti-Semite, and he asked the King's
permission
to kill all the Jews, which he got. So Haman sent out a proclamation
to
all the lands in the kingdom outlining his plan. Distressed, the
Jews
sought a court-issued injunction to stop Haman from sending it. But
Haman was defended by the head of the Persian Civil Liberties Union,
who
ironically was also Jewish, and who claimed that the injunction
would
violate Haman's right to free speech. And the injunction was not
issued,
so the proclamation was sent.

Chapter IV

And Mordechai knew of all that had happened, and he donned a black
ribbon as a sign of mourning. And Esther sent a messenger to
Mordechai
to console him, but he would not be consoled. Then Mordechai sent
word
back to Esther that she should go the King and ask him to stop the
impending killing of all the Jews. Esther replied that other social
issues, such as the environment and harassment in the workplace were

more pressing, but Mordechai persuaded her as to the urgency of the
matter, and she agreed. Mordechai suggested calling all the Jews to
synagogue for three days of fasting and prayers, but Esther thought
that
was way outdated, and instead called for a non-denominational
candlelight vigil, and it was so.

Chapter V

And it came to pass on the third day that Esther put on her smartest

business suit and went to see the King. The King offered Esther up
to
half his assets, which he was actually required to give her anyway,
based on their pre-nup. Esther told the King that she had come to
invite
him and Haman to a big party she was throwing the next day. The King
was
very excited, and both he and Haman showed up to Royal Person
Esther's
party. The King, for his part, was careful not to violate the
out-of-court settlement he had made with Vashti, and there was none
of
that "dance naked" stuff that night. The party was a big hit, with
performances by Fleetwood Mac and crowd favorite Barbra Streisand.
And
Esther informed the King that both he and Haman were also invited to
her
next party, being thrown the following day on Martha's Vineyard.
Upon
leaving the party, Haman spotted his old nemesis Mordechai, which
ruined
his night. Haman's wife advised Haman to build a gallows 50 amot
tall
and ask the King to have Mordechai hanged the next day. She further
advised him to quit referring to her as "Haman's Wife." And he
built the
gallows.

Chapter VI

That night, the King had trouble sleeping. He called for his
servants to
bring him a video to watch, but since having gotten rid of all his
stag
films as part of his sensitivity training following the Vashti
debacle,
all they had left were a bunch of movies filmed in Montana and
produced
by Robert Redford. So they brought him the royal archives instead,
and
there he read that Mordechai had done him a big favor a few years
back.
Just then, Haman came in, and the King asked him what to do for
someone
to whom he owed a favor. Haman suggested maybe an ambassadorship to
some
insignificant but warm-climate country, or maybe letting him spend a

night in the palace's "Lincoln Bedroom." But the King decided to
have
Haman lead Mordechai around on a horse throughout the streets of
Shushan. However, the animal rights activists got wind of the King's

plan, and they went nuts, so it was decided that Haman would just
lead
Mordechai around on foot. And it was so. When he was done leading
Mordechai around, Haman walked home, despondent. But no sooner had
he
returned home than the King's messengers arrived to bring him to
Esther's second party. Haman's wife realized that her husband was
doomed
and commented that she had always known he would never amount to
anything.

Chapter VII

And the King and Haman came to drink with Royal Person Esther. And
it
was during the party that Esther shocked the King by telling him
that
someone in that very room was plotting to kill her and all the other

Jews. "Who is that man?" yelled the King. To which Esther replied
"What
makes you so sure it's a man? You don't think that a women is
capable of
killing all the Jewish people?" After an awkward silence, Esther
told
the King that is was, in fact, a man, and it was none other than his

chief advisor Haman! The King stormed out in a fit a rage and
meanwhile
Haman begged at Esther's feet for her to spare his life. He told her
how
he had grown up in a broken home, was raised by a crack-selling
mother
and had never had a normal childhood. Esther declared Haman to be a
product of society's failure to protect its children. So Haman's
crime
of "attempted genocide" was reduced to "issuing proclamations
without a
license" and he was given the relatively light sentence of
five-to-seven
years. After serving just two years of that sentence, he was given
time
off for good behavior and paroled. And the following year, the
residents
of Shushan elected Haman as their mayor, his being a felon
notwithstanding. Meanwhile, Esther convinced the King to come to
terms
with his anger and latent feelings of hostility towards women, and
the
King entered a 12-step program and when he was through, his anger
had
subsided.

Chapter VIII

That day, the King gave Esther Haman's house, and she told the King
that
Mordechai was her uncle. And Mordechai asked the King's permission
for
the Jews to rise up and kill their enemies. But Esther would have no

such thing, and instead, she arranged for a dialog being the Jewish
leaders and the leaders of the people of Shushan. And while they
couldn't overcome all their differences, they did agree to
joint-author
a letter of mutual acceptance and tolerance.

Chapter IX

And in the twelfth month, the month of Adar, on the day when the
Jews
were supposed to have been exterminated, the Jews held a three-day
conference of the Leaders of Jewish Organizations. And during that
conference, they agreed that a holiday should be established-the
holiday
of Purim. A holiday of charity and gift-giving. A holiday of
brotherly
love. A holiday where alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules
would
be suspended. A holiday where Jewish kids could dress up like Ninja
Turtles and Power Rangers and not have to feel that they had missed
out
on something by not celebrating Halloween. And a proclamation was
sent
out to all the King's lands, in all 127 languages, plus Ebonics. And
the
Jews were careful not to mention G-d's name, lest any of the
gentiles be
offended.

Chapter X

And King Achashverosh--the kinder and gentler King
Achashverosh--levied
a tax across the land, to raise money to pay for welfare and public
television. And the great deeds of Royal Person Esther and her uncle

Mordechai were duly recorded in the annals of Persia.

Friday, February 22, 2013

A "Sh**ty Little Pseudo-Professor" from Tel Aviv University

1. The following story is self-explanatory. It shows what has
become of Tel Aviv University. Shlomo Sand is an anti-Semitic
Stalinist pseudo-academic with "expertise" in the French cinema. He
now claims to be an authority on Jews and Judaism.

http://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/shlomo-sand-at-soas-israel-a-shitty-nation-most-racist-society-in-world/
(go to page to link into the clips)

Shlomo Sand at SOAS: Israel is "a shitty nation" and "the most racist
society in the world".
Posted on February 21, 2013 |

Shlomo Sand in full flow at SOAS last night.
Last night Tel Aviv University history professor Shlomo Sand referred
to Israel as a "shitty nation" (clip 1). He called Israel "the most
racist society in the world" and said that he has been fighting
"Jewish racism all my life" (both clip 2). And he declared that
anti-Semitism doesn't exist in the western world today (clip 3).
He was speaking in London at the SOAS launch of his new book The
Invention of The Land of Israel. The much discredited thesis of his
previous book The Invention of The Jewish People is that there was no
expulsion of the Jews from the Holy Land; diaspora Jews, therefore,
must have all descended from converts and so have no right to return
to Israel.
The already much discredited thesis of The Invention of The Land of
Israel is, simply, that the land of Israel holds no religious
significance for Jews either.
First, he claimed, there is no mention of "Israel" in the bible; it is
only mentioned in the Talmud. This is not true (see note 1). Second,
he claimed that political Zionism grew out of Christianity, not
Judaism, and he solely credits Lord Shaftesbury and the evangelical
Christian movement in London for the idea that Jews should return to
the Holy Land.
But Sand, conveniently, regards great religious figures like Rabbi
Alkalia and Rabbi Kalischer, who in the early nineteenth century wrote
voraciously about the pressing need for Jews to return to Zion, as
only minority influences.
Sand claimed that the Balfour Declaration came about due to three main reasons:
1. The ideological background of many leaders who wanted Redemption
via a Jewish return to the Holy Land.
2. The colonialist interests of Britain in the Middle East.
3. Anti-Semitism – Balfour didn't want suffering Jews from the East
coming to Britain.
Sand said Jews preferred to move to America but after 1924, when
America stopped eastern European immigration altogether, no country
would accept Jews who then had no choice but to go to the Holy Land
against their will.
Sand, again, conveniently ignores the examples of the Jewish pioneers
in the Hibbat Zion and BILU movements who volunteered to move to the
harsh conditions of the Holy Land during the 1880s to try to make a
life there.
Sand views Israelis as a nation even if a "shitty one". But, for Sand,
they aren't a Jewish nation because he doesn't recognise such a
concept exists. Sand views being Jewish as a purely religious concept
and said that Hamas in Gaza are much more likely to be descended from
the ancient people who once inhabited the Holy Land than he is.
Sand says he desires a two-state solution with equal rights for Arabs
living in Israel and for Jews living in a future Palestine.
Presumably, it would be an Israel where diaspora Jews would have
limited, if any, rights to move to.
And on anti-Semitism Sand said:
"The century of anti-Semitism between 1850 and 1950 is finished.
Pro-Zionists don't understand history. I don't think that political
public anti-Semitism exists today in the western world. You cannot
find members of Parliament in Britain or the United States who are
openly anti-Semitic. You cannot find journalists who are anti-Semitic.
You cannot find films that are anti-Semitic."
This is what many in the audience wanted to hear. It was their
official certificate that they are not Jew haters even though they
focus solely on opposing the Jewish state while ignoring atrocities by
both sides in Syria, by Hamas in Gaza and by the Saudi Arabian
monarchy and the Iranian government which both brutally oppress their
own people. To name but a few.
Once again, Sand conveniently ignores or is unaware of the example of
Liberal Democrat David Ward who recently accused "the Jews" of
inflicting something akin to a Holocaust on the Palestinians.
Sand is the master of cherry-picking anything that backs up his
argument while ignoring anything inconvenient that might detract from
it.
His recent books are not based on proper fact, record or history. They
are simply driven by a hatred for the Jewish state.
Notes:
1. For a superb taking down of Sand's new book see here via Elder of Ziyon.
2. For a superb analysis of Sand speaking at The Frontline Club the
previous night see here via Jonathan Hoffman.
Clips from last night (not good sound quality):
Clip 1 – Sand declares Israel a "shitty nation":

See also: http://www.thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/shlomos-away-with-the-fairies

If you would like to complain to the university that refuses to fire
Sand, write to:
Tel Aviv University:
President, Professor Joseph Klafter
Email klafter@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University
P.O. Box 39040
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL
Tel: 972-3-6408254
Fax: 972-3-6406466
Rector: Prof. Aron Shai
Email: aashai@post.tau.ac.il
and rector@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University
P.O. Box 39040
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL
American Friends Offices of Tel Aviv University:
http://www.aftau.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_contact
Other "Friends of" Groups: http://www.tau.ac.il/friends-eng.html


2. A bit long but you may find interesting: The Collapse of Iran's Rial:
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3597/iran-rial-collpase


3. Citation From Carl Jung. The Collected Works Volume 18, The
Symbolic Life, 1939, Princeton, Princeton University Press p. 281.

first appeared here: Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, 1939

Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist, was asked in the late 1930s
in an interview if he had any views on what was likely to be the next
step in religious development. He replied, referring to the rise of
Nazism in Germany, "We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a
new Islam. He is already on the way; he is like Muhammad. The emotion
in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with
wild god. That can be the historic future."

Some other similar citations are here in an interesting piece:
http://www.newenglishreview.org/Ibn_Warraq/Apologists_of_Totalitarianism%3A_From_Communism_to_Islam,_Part_I/#_ftn10


4. Learn the truth about BDS - go to PACBI.com

David Newman justifies BDS at
http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/BGU%20-%20David%20Newman%20-%20justifies%20BDS.htm

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Ten Years Ago

The following was posted and published exactly ten years ago. So many
have forgotten those dark days.

I think the time is apt for re-posting. The comments are still relevant:

http://www.jewishpressclassifieds.com/pageroute.do/14563/

Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee
By: Steven Plaut

Date: Friday, January 17 2003

Consider a country in which the minister of
justice prepares an official ''speech code'' that
delineates the boundaries of permissible
speech, and where violators may be sent to
prison.

Consider a country in which people are
arrested for expressing criticism or dissent,
even if it is in a casual conversation in a cafe, a
bank or a barber shop.

Consider a country in which the minister
of education calls upon school pupils and their
parents to report to the police the names of
teachers who make ''incendiary statements'' or
engage in ''incitement.''

Consider a country where people are
afraid to express their political opinions for
fear of being overheard by informants and
where people look over their shoulders before
daring to speak candidly about politics.

Consider a country in which rabbis are
openly vilified by the leaders of the state,
where politicians, journalists and professors
call for the wholesale arrest of rabbis and
religious

dissidents, where scores of rabbis are
interrogated by the police for ''inciting.''

Consider a country where religious Jews
walking down the street are insulted and
called ''murderers'' and other foul names by
passersby.

Consider a country where a popular radio
host calls for a law that would require that all
dissidents either recant their views and
endorse government policies or go to prison; or
where a newspaper columnist closely identified
with the ruling party declares that Voltaire's
famous statement (where he says that he
would die for the rights to free speech for those
with whom he disagrees) represents the most
absurd and ridiculous idea imaginable.

Imagine a country where teenagers are
imprisoned for making statements and posters
that are in poor taste, or where an old man can
be arrested for losing his temper and shouting
at a policeman, ''What do you think this is
here, a police state?

Imagine a country where people can be
arrested for making jokes that some might
regard as being in poor taste.

Imagine a country in which dissidents
quoting old statements by the prime minister
himself or who quote from the Bible could be
arrested on charges of engaging in incitement
and rebellion.

Now ask yourselves, does all of the above
describe the Habsburg Empire during the
worst Franciscan repressions of the early 19th
century? Or maybe some totalitarian country
before the fall of communism? Or perhaps a
fictitious government in some Orwellian
political novel?

No, I'm afraid the above is an exact
description of Israel as it was in the immediate
aftermath of the assassination of Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Each example refers
to an actual event that occurred in Israel in the
months after that murder.

Seven years after the event, Israel is still
in a state of shock from the Rabin
assassination. One of the most harmful and
dangerous aftershocks to that murder has been
a long series of assaults upon the fundamental
democratic freedoms and rights of Israeli
citizens, led mainly by the Israeli Left.

Rabin's body was not yet cold when an
anti-democratic theory of the assassination was
invented. In the following days, not only was
this theory repeated endlessly, but it assumed
the status of revealed gospel. The theory holds
that the assassination was caused by
irresponsible speech, by calls of ''Rabin is a
Murderer/Traitor,'' by incitement and agitation
on the part of anti-Oslo dissidents.

In response to this theory-as-gospel, there
were repeated calls in Israel for new legislation
to suppress ''oral violence'' and ''incitement.''
In 1995 the minister of justice even prepared a
new law that would have instituted a sort of a
national ''speech code'' delineating the
boundaries of acceptable speech (it was never
implemented). The governments of both Labor
and Likud approved decisions to make a
growing list of organizations on the Israeli ''far
right'' illegal, simply on the basis of their
positions and opinions. A long list of people
were investigated and/or indicted for
''incitement.''

Following the assassination, an assault on
dissent and democracy was launched by
Israel's politicians from the Labor Party and
the leftist Meretz. For example, a call to pupils
and parents to inform to the police on teachers
engaging in ''incitement'' came from the
minister of education under the Labor Party's
administration, Professor Amnon Rubinstein of
Meretz. Rubinstein is a well-known expert on
constitutional law, which he taught for many
years at Tel Aviv University. Prosecutions of
people for having expressed anti-Oslo opinions
continued even under Likud administrations.

All of this is no less frightening and
alarming than the assassination itself. It is
particularly troubling because the new
orthodoxy is itself patently false. It is also
dangerous because the criminalizing and
prosecution of extremists on the far right could
in fact lead to an upsurge in violence.

First, despite the shock that we all felt
and feel, it behooves us to recall that Rabin
was not killed by free speech, but by a
murderer with a gun.

Second, is there anyone who seriously
believes that the murderer would not have
carried out this crime if every single
demonstrator at every single anti-Oslo
demonstration had spoken with restraint and
expressed his criticism of the government in
eloquent and civilized words?

Third, if ''vile speech'' causes
assassination, then Israel should have had an
endless carnage of its political leaders ever
since independence (if not beforehand). Israeli
political discourse is and always has been
characterized by rhetorical overkill, ad
hominem slander, and unrestrained high-
decibel shrieking.

Anyone with any doubts should go read
the protocols of the Knesset from the 1950's,
when even back then, in the pre-television era,
Knesset debate was constantly peppered with
cries of ''Fascist,'' ''Traitor,'' ''Dictator,''
''Criminal,'' etc., coming from all sides of the
chamber. David Ben-Gurion himself frequently
referred to his chief ideological opponent,
Vladimir Jabotinsky, as ''Vladimir Hitler.''

Perhaps it is Israel's proximity to the
Mediterranean, but political discussion here is
and always has been uncivilized. (Any doubters
should watch the weekly political barroom
brawl on Israeli television, Popolitika.) Yet
until this crime, no political leader was ever
assassinated in Israel. That is because vile or
angry speech does not cause assassination.

The orthodoxy regarding the Rabin
assassination was in part motivated by the fact
that a handful of Israeli fanatics expressed
public approval when they heard of the
assassination. But if that?s against the law,
will it also become a crime to say, ''I believe
the government is betraying Zionism,'' or ''I
believe certain politicians are collaborating
with Arab murderers,'' or ''I believe the Israeli
Labor Party is pandering to those who wish to
destroy Israel,'' or ''Mitzna is betraying the
country's interest''?

Will all these statements become grounds
for prosecution? Where will the criminalization
of dissent stop?

Vile speech is not a monopoly of hotheads
of the Israeli right, as the anti-Begin

demonstrators in 1982-83 proved during
Israel's ''Peace in Galilee'' campaign in
Lebanon. Their slogan was ''Begin and Sharon
are Murderers and War Criminals.'' No one
was assassinated as a result of this.

I myself was present in many a
demonstration against the Vietnam War (yes,
we all have skeletons in our closet over which
we wince) in which the president of the United
States was called a murderer and worse, and
where people openly called for the
assassination of both the president and vice
president. The anti-Bush demonstrators before
and during the Gulf War were no less vile, as
are the pro-Saddam campus demonstrators
this year. But no political assassinations
followed.

Every year, on the anniversary of the
Rabin assassination, Israel's leftists and their
captive media recite the accusations over and
over again: that Rabin was really murdered by
the exercise of free speech by the Likud and the
opponents of Oslo. This is nothing but leftist
McCarthyism, of course. The Likud had
nothing to do with the crime of Yigal Amir.

Why are the calls for suppressing 'vile
and incendiary speech' limited to restrictions
on the vile statements and behavior of
extremists from the Right? Why the arbitrary
and selective bias? Are vile and fanatic and
tasteless statements a monopoly of the Right?
And is there any shortage of criminals who
sprang up from the fringes of the Left?

It is enough to recall nuclear traitor
Mordecai Vanunu and the espionage/terror
ring led by Udi Adiv, all black sheep from the
far left. What about the countless leftist
statements justifying Palestinian terrorism in
general and especially when targeting settlers?
How do we know that these did not inspire
murders and bombings?

Leftists insist that only rightist speech
stimulates violence, not leftist speech. Their
''proof'' consists of a single example: Yigal
Amir holds rightist views, no doubt listened to
such views expressed by others, and killed
Rabin. Of course, Yigal Amir was also a law
student, but no one has asserted that it was
the studying of law that caused him to murder
Rabin.

And what about the countless calls by
Israeli Arab politicians and leaders for Israel to
be annihilated? What about Arabs who said
''Good'' after the Rabin assassination? What
about Arab college students who chant ''In fire
and blood we will redeem Palestine!'' or who
decorate their subsidized dorm rooms with
photos of suicide bombers and Hizbullah flags?

What about Arab Knesset Members and
other politicians who called on Saddam
Hussein to exterminate the Jews of Israel or
who call for escalating intifada violence? What
about Arab demonstrators whose standard
chant is ''Butcher the Jews!''?

The proponents of the politically correct
theory of free speech and incitement have
always argued that these forms of speech by
Arabs should be tolerated with equanimity. In
post-Rabin Israel, these are all forms of
protected speech. How many Jews have been
murdered by terrorists inspired by these forms
of expression?

Finally, it is conceivable that abridging
the freedom of speech of extremists could
inflame violence rather than suppress it. In
recent years it has been hypothesized that
some extremists in the U.S. were driven into
the violent neo-Nazi militias by the FBI?s
actions in Waco, Texas and in Ruby Ridge,
Idaho. The Oklahoma City bomber claimed he
was inspired by those FBI actions.

In Israel, the Kahanists from Kach have
been driven underground because their
opinions have been criminalized. Kach and its
affiliates have been declared ''terrorist
organizations'' and have been banned as
''racist organizations'' under Israel's
arbitrarily applied ''anti-racist'' laws. Arab
political parties and politicians advocating
genocide of Jews have never been similarly
indicted or criminalized.

Kach was banned from running for
election, and the leaders of Kach arrested
repeatedly for expressing unpopular opinions.
These actions were cheered on by American
Jewish leaders, even though they would clearly
violate the First Amendment if carried out in
America, where Kahanist groups operate
openly and legally.

Is it inconceivable that banning the
expression of views by Kach loyalists may
actually have driven some to violence? Does the
political establishment think that Kahanists
will suddenly repent because of the new
suppression of ''incitement,'' convert their
opinions, embrace moderation and the
discredited Oslo peace process? When people
are denied the right to express their opinions,
they sometimes turn to violence as an
alternative.

The murder of Rabin was a terrible
tragedy. Israel must prevent it from becoming
an even worse disaster, one in which the
country?s basic democratic freedoms are
abridged.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Meet the BDS-holes!

1. Meet the BDS-holes:

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/the-nazi-roots-of-the-boycott-israel-movement/
(see web page for links and sources)

The Nazi Roots of the Boycott-Israel Movement
Posted By Steven Plaut On February 19, 2013

The so-called "BDS" movement is nothing less than a poorly-disguised
campaign of bigotry and aggression against Jews by anti-Semites and
jihadists.

While its roots go back far earlier, ever since the 1930s the first
manifestation of Nazi-like anti-Semitism has been to organize economic
boycotts against Jews. On the day Hitler came to power in 1933 he
ordered a nationwide campaign of BDS or "boycotts, divestment and
sanctions" against Germany's Jews. It was of course only the opening
round in economic warfare and aggression directed against Jews. The
Germans claimed that they were actually the victims of the Jews, who
were occupying German territory. Sound familiar?

The Arab countries quickly took note of the lessons from Germany. As
soon as Israel's existence and independence were proclaimed, the
Islamofascist world announced a total BDS campaign, including a trade
embargo, against Israel. This boycott was generally also implemented
against non-Israeli Jews, removing any doubt as to the real agenda of
the boycotters. That boycott is still by and large in effect, although
here and there one can see cracks in it. Syrian Arabs injured by the
Assad junta feel no hesitation to flee to the Israeli border and ask
for medical assistance, which they get for free, and Arabs from the
Gulf states quietly fly to Israel to get medical treatments.

The latest manifestation of Boycott-the-Jews anti-Semitism is in the
campus "BDS" movement. Like the previous boycotts, the newer "BDS" is
nothing more than a campaign of economic warfare and aggression
against Jews. The main aggressors these days are small groups of
campus anti-Semites and brownshirts from the Far Left and the Far
Right, joined by Islamofascists. The recent campus Day of Anti-Semitic
Hatred at Brooklyn College was just the tip of the swastika, and was
thoroughly denounced by Alan Dershowitz and others. The same
university administrators who would order in the state troopers to
prevent any "conference" on the genetic inferiority of black folks or
on the mental deficiencies of homosexuals are the first to defend
academic pogroms against Jews in the name of freedom of speech. Can
campus Holocaust Denial Rallies be far behind? You can see a leading
British BDS advocate posing in front of an Arab swastika, used by the
Syrian neo-Nazi group, the SSNP, here. The resemblance to Judith
Butler and her recent appearance at the Brooklyn College Hatefest is,
in the immortal words of Yoggi Berra, too coincidental to be a
coincidence.

It is more than a bit ironic that the anti-Semites who are running the
so-called BDS campaign choose to adopt for themselves a term that has
an older meaning of pathological aggression in those suffering from
dementia. In psychiatry, BDS stands for Behavioral Dyscontrol Scale.
But the psychiatrists got only part of the picture right. Probably a
better definition of BDS is Bigots, Dingbats and Scoundrels. An entire
web site that mocks PACBI.org, the main BDS organization, is a
must-see at Pacbi.com. The original anti-Semitic PACBI name stands for
the "Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of
Israel." The mock site defines "Pacbi" as Pathetic Assholes Conspiring
to Boycott Israel.

Its front page message is worth citing:

'BDS-ers come from the goosestepping Neo-Nazi Right, from the
bedwetting radical Left, from the "anarchist" anarcho-fascist
movements, from the various front groups for the "International
Solidarity Movement" or ISM (which stands for "I Support Murderers").
BDS is the official mantra of the anti-Semitic vermin and their
genocidal fellow travelers, who are attempting to get the world to
boycott Israel. The BDS scum consist of anti-Jewish racists seeking
the annihilation of Israel and strive for a second Holocaust of the
Jewish people. They work to achieve this while pretending that they
think Israel mistreats Arabs. If they had been alive in the 1930s and
1940s, they would all have been participating in the German movement
to boycott and divest from Jews.
Omar Barghouti is the Arab graduate student in Israel who set up the
original BDS organization, PACBI.org. He was a bit foolishly admitted
as a MA student (in philosophy) into Israel's Tel Aviv University and
then decided to show his gratitude for that by organizing a
one-jihadist pogrom against the existence of the country that was
educating him. (The philosophy department at TAU is itself a den of
anti-Israel radical leftist agitprop.) So the leading advocate of
world boycotts of Israeli academic institutions is unwilling to
boycott them himself and drop out of his own degree program. He stayed
registered in the "Zionist" institution, collecting his cushy
fellowship handouts.'

But the irony does not end there. Barghouti is not a Palestinian at
all. He was born in Qatar and was raised in Egypt, making him a sort
of Edward Said "Palestinian," meaning a non-Palestinian.

Barghouti not only hates Jews. He also hates white people and
proclaims them to be an inferior race! Really! He is quoted thus: "For
some peculiar reason Omar Barghouti, BDS's leading activist makes some
biologically determinist remarks. He for instance declares that he
won't take a lecture from a 'white person'. But Barghouti doesn't stop
there, he clearly makes a connection between 'skin colour', political
stand and violence. It seems as if Barghouti is also aware of himself
making a racist statement when he suggests that 'the white race is the
most violent in history of mankind.'" So says the Egyptian.

In his exposeé of Barghouti in Frontpage Magazine, writer Daniel
Greenfield reveals: "Omar Barghouti is a distant cousin of Marwan
Barghouti and Mustafa Barghouti. Marwan Barghouti is a major terrorist
leader serving five life sentences for numerous murders. Mustafa
Barghouti was a Soviet-educated Communist leader and a candidate for
the presidency of the Palestinian Authority." He adds: "Omar Barghouti
tried to latch on to Occupy Wall Street by claiming to represent 'the
global 99 percent.' Considering how much money and power the
Barghoutis have, they are the 1 percent, both locally and globally.
Anyone who has seen the mansions of the ruling elite in the West Bank
can only laugh at Omar's assertion that Israel is part of the 1
percent exploiting the rest of humanity, while the influential clans
like the Barghoutis are the 99 percent."

Writing on the Huffington Post, the left-of-center French philosopher
Bernard Henry Levi called the BDS "movement" a lot of "crap." He
explains:

'Why? First of all, because one boycotts totalitarian regimes, not
democracies. One can boycott Sudan, guilty of the extermination of
part of the population of Darfur. One can boycott China, guilty of
massive violations of human rights in Tibet and elsewhere. One can and
should boycott the Iran of Sakineh and Jafar Panahi, whose leaders
have become deaf to the language of common sense and compromise. One
can even imagine, as we once did with regard to the fascist generals'
Argentina or Brezhnev's USSR, boycotting those Arab regimes whose
citizens' freedom of expression is forbidden and punished, if
necessary, in blood. One does not boycott the only society in the
Middle East where Arabs read a free press, demonstrate when they wish
to do so, send freely elected representatives to parliament, and enjoy
their rights as citizens. Regardless of what one thinks of the
policies of its government, one does not boycott the only country in
the region and, beyond the region, one of the unfortunately limited
number of countries in the world where voters have the power to
sanction, modify, and reverse the position of said government.'

The racism of the boycotters is not even hidden from view. The BDS
gang are not boycotting any Israeli Arabs and not even Israeli leftist
Jews, at least not usually. In fact they do not even boycott Israeli
Arabs who own property and assets in the "occupied" West Bank. After
all, if you thought that no Israelis have the right to own property
there because it is "occupied" territory, almost like Corsica, how
come the Israeli Arabs who do so get a free pass from the BDSholes,
the term a growing number of commentators are calling them?

The other irony of course is that BDS aggression and warfare harms
Israeli Arabs and other non-Jews, as well as Jews. To the extent that
Israeli exports are harmed, those working in export industries lose
out, and there are plenty of Arab workers and entrepreneurs affected.
Not just in Israel but also in the "West Bank." The BDSholes recently
decided to target "Sodastream," an Israeli company that makes
fashionable environmentally-friendly nifty devices for dispensing
carbonated water for mixing drinks. The boycott of it by the BDS gang
is harming Palestinian employees of the company.

But you've got to hand it to the boycotters. They hate Jews so much
that they want Jews harmed even if the campaign also harms Arabs.
After all, Arabs are nothing more than an instance of collateral
damage in the holy war of aggression and jihad against the Jews. In
the view of the BDSholes, Arabs never are entitled to any human rights
protection in Arab countries. Arabs need protection only when this
serves to undermine, endanger, and demonize the Jews. In all other
cases, let them eat stale pita!



2. Let's spank Bill Maher:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/bill-maher-goes-full-bore-anti-semitic/


3. Correction: Eitan Haber, subject of a posting a couple of days
back, was NOT a member of the Knesset (as he was incorrectly described
by me), but WAS the Labor Party consigliere for Yitzhak Rabin and
other Labor Party officials.

Monday, February 18, 2013

News of Purim and of Amalek

1. A Purim Spoof that went bad:
http://myrightword.blogspot.co.il/2008/03/plauts-purim-spoof.html

2. The political lessons of Purim:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/6087

3. The Purim Clown:
http://zioncon.blogspot.co.il/2011/03/purim-clown-1997.html

4. The Politically Correct Scroll of Esther:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/2104

5. Hobsbawm and His Admirers
http://hurryupharry.org/2013/02/18/hobsbawm-and-his-admirers/
Guest Post, February 18th 2013, 4:27 pm
This is a guest post by Paul Bogdanor
Almost 20 years ago, the communist historian Eric Hobsbawm gave the
following answers in an interview:
Q: In 1934, millions of people are dying in the Soviet experiment. If
you had known that, would it have made a difference to you at that
time? To your commitment? To being a communist?
A: … Probably not…
Q: What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow
actually been created, the loss of 15, 20 million people might have
been justified?
A: Yes.
(Times Literary Supplement, October 28, 1994)
More recently, the author David Pryce-Jones recalled witnessing
another such exchange:
At a dinner to which we were both invited, [Hobsbawm] first glorified
Castro's Cuba to another guest, the British ambassador there at the
time, and then went on to say that a nuclear bomb ought to be dropped
on Israel, because it was better to kill 5 million Jews now than 200
million innocent people in a world war later.
(National Review, October 29, 2012)
Tomorrow, Independent Jewish Voices will be holding a book launch in
London. IJV is a fringe group that likes to flaunt its ethical
superiority to the vast majority of British Jews who do not hate the
Jewish state.
IJV is dedicating the event to Eric Hobsbawm.


6. British Anti-Semitism:
http://hurryupharry.org/2013/02/18/mark-gardner-on-antisemitism/

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Haber Happens

I suppose it is not really news when it is discovered that leftism
and treason go together hand in hand. Nevertheless there are two
revelations associated in one way or another with the "Prisoner X"
affair that help to renew our appreciation of how thoroughly these two
things are intertwined.

If you have not been following the "Prisoner X" story very
closely, or if you have been following it closely but do not
understand what the ruckus is all about, I am afraid that you and I
are on the same page. The story was released last week after having
been kept quiet for quite a while. By "being kept quiet" I mean from
the media. The actual people involved, including the family of
"Prisoner X" and just about everyone in Australia knew all about it
and in fact some had been visiting the perp.

For a couple of years, anti-Semitic bloggers have been spreading
the rumor that Israel had seized and was holding in secret captivity
an important espionage figure, named as an Iranian general by these
bloggers. The anti-Semitic unemployed pro-Iran blogger from Seattle,
Richard Silverstein, who likes to claim he is Israel's "Wikileaks,"
had a wikileak in his shorts when it turned out that the "jailed
Iranian" he had been "reporting" about was in fact an Australian Jew
(see http://www.israellycool.com/2013/02/12/sloppy-dick-strikes-again-2/).
(This is noteworthy because some of the less intelligent journalists
on the planet, including a few in Israel, like to cite Dickie
Silverstein as if he has any credibility and as if he is a serious
journalistic source. If you want to see who this Silverstein really
is, go to www.kapodickie.blogspot.com and especially
http://kapodickie.blogspot.co.il/2009/03/oh-boo-hoo-kapo-dickie-whines-about.html
.)

Anyway, while only portions of the story have emerged and are
clarified, it turns out that "Prisoner X" was one Ben Zygier, an
youngish Australian Jew who was active in the Marxist Hashomer Haztair
movement and moved to Israel to live on one such Hashomer Haztair
Marxist kibbutz for a while. You will see in a moment why I emphasize
that.

Some of the following is based on filling in the blanks and
reading between the media lines (as usual, I have no insider
information). But it looks like Comrade Zygier was recruited at some
point by the Mossad, Israel's CIA, and played some sort of role in the
assassination of a Hamas senior operative in Dubai, one Mahmoud al
Mabhouh. According to media accounts, Israeli agents used foreign
passports to get into Dubai and then to "recycle" the terrorist. You
may recall that at the time I posted a blog item in which I offered
the Israeli agency to use my own passport any time it wanted.

In any case, as far as can be understood from the coyness in
the media reports, Zygier's role was to find some Aussies and maybe
Kiwis whose passports could be used for the operation. For reasons
that are not clear but I suspect have to do with him being a Marxist,
it seems that Zygier then changed sides and started leaking details
about that operation to Gulf Arabs working for Iran. Israel was
trying to keep the business about the foreign passports quiet,
although I think most of the world long ago learned about this, and so
Israel arrested Zygier and tossed him into solitary, in fact into the
very same cell once occupied by Yigal Amir, the assassin of Rabin.
Why all this should interest the media more than the holding of
al-Qaeda terrorists in prisons around the world (and not only in
Gitmo) is not clear.

Zygier was kept there, not entirely secretly or incommunicado, and
his family from Australian paid him regular visits. At some point he
committed suicide, something that people in jail sometimes do. This
happened two years back. So this old story became a new story when
the non-Israeli media started gabbing about it and eventually the
Attorney General in Israel okayed reporting it. (Israel has an
almost-never-used censor official for discussion in the media of some
sensitive military secrets, things like names of agents.) And that is
pretty much it.

One curious twist to this is that almost NO ONE in the media is
mentioning Zygier's Marxism or ties to the Far Left in Israel, and in
fact I myself only discovered it buried in small fonts on an inside
page. One would think that the fact that an apparent traitor and
double agent was also a Far Leftist might carry some interest.

But the other interesting twist to all this is in an Op-Ed today
in Yediot Ahronot published by Eitan Haber. He is a hardcore Labor
Party Menshivik in Israel and has sat in the Knesset. He may be best
known for being the official who spoke to the media and announced
officially that Yitzhak Rabin had been murdered. Haber then was a
leader in the movement of McCarthyism to paint all non-leftists as
complicit in Rabin's murder and to insist that Rabin was murdered by
the exercise of freedom of speech by Rabin's critics.

Anyhow, ordinarily Haber's opinions are not worthy of debunking.
But in today's column he reveals another interesting connection
between treason and leftism. He discusses the case of the nuclear spy
Mordecai Vanunu. As you recall, Vanunu was arrested while trying to
reveal oodles of secrets about Israel's nuclear capabilities and
infrastructure. Vanunu was a communist who held a minor position in
the Dimona nuclear facilities (talk about incompetence of Israeli
intelligence services!), and somehow got access to sensitive
materials. He had become an anti-Israel communist when he was a
student at Ben Gurion University (does that surprise you?). He has
since become the resident martyr saint for anti-Israel communists all
over the world, including people like Noam Chomsky.

Well, in his column today Haber releases some details about the
Vanunu treason that were not previously known, at least not by me.
It seems that at first some details of the espionage and arrest of
Vanunu were leaking out and reaching the British media, including an
offer by Vanunu to sell documents he had stolen from the nuclear
facility. The same British media who later broke the story were
skeptical that the story was for real and refused to run it.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government was assembling some Israeli
journalists to speak with them quietly about how the story should be
handled if it broke. Right after that meeting, the editor in chief of
Haaretz, Gershon Shoken, telephoned the Haaretz reporter in the UK,
who then made sure the British media knew about the briefing in
Israel. The Brits then understood that the story was for real and ran
it, with all the collateral damage this caused.

Haber's motive for telling this story is that he wants readers
to understand that, in such matters, SH*T Happens. My motive in
reporting the story is that I want readers to understand that Leftist
Treason Happens, including in the Palestinian newspaper published in
Hebrew, Haaretz, and in Marxist Hashomer kibbutzim.

It also behooves us to bear in mind that when it comes to Labor
Party McCarthyism, Haber Happens.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

"Two State Solution" - Let's have Two States for Two Peoples!!

Now that Netanyahu is once again waving about the slogan of a
"Two-State Solution" (see this:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4343800,00.html), and never
mind that he was just re-elected by voters who were convinced he had
completely abandoned that delusion, I thought the time was ripe for
re-posting my earlier proposal for a Two-State Solution. This is the
only two-state solution that is feasible, and one over which all
Israelis from all parts of the spectrum can be brought together to
back it in consensus. It is based on two states for two peoples.

It goes like this: The Jews keep their one state, controlling all
the land west of the Jordan River. The Arabs then give up 21 out of
their 22 states. They retain just one out of those 22 states, which
will be centered in the Arab homeland, Saudi Arabia, ending their
occupation of all other lands belonging to other peoples.

That leaves two states for two peoples.

SImple!

The Charge of the Speech Brigade

The Newest Charge of the Speech Brigade

The Likud government and its leftist Attorney General continue to
jihad against freedom of speech in Israel. The Likud has always been
devoted to defending freedom of speech for Arab fascists and for
Jewish anti-Israel radical leftists, just not for anyone else. Under
the Likud *much like under the Labor Party Mensheviks), the Kahanists
were criminalized and denied freedom of speech. People making
"insensitive" or "racist" comments or having insensitive bumper
stickers or Tee shirts were arrested, but only if they were being
insensitive towards Arabs. Likudian Israel still enforces Israel's
ridiculous "anti-racism" laws that allow the police to arrest Jews
making anti-Arab comments. All of Israel is subject to a "speech
code."

Let us be clear. In real democracies it is not a crime to make a
racist or insensitive or bigoted comment. If it were, half the
universities in the United States would be shut down for issuing
anti-Semitic statements. If you make an intolerant racist comment in
a real democracy, you might get punched in the nose but the police
will not arrest you. Civilized people may repudiate you or mock you
or dismiss you. But you will NOT be taken to jail.

Israel's semi-democratic regime has a long track record of
suppressing freedom of speech and arresting people for the "crime" of
"racism." Judges studiously refuse to defend freedom of speech. A
rabbi who wrote a book deemed "racist" was harassed by the police, as
were other rabbis who recommended that people read the book. People
have been arrested for wearing "anti-Arab" tee shirts or having bumper
stickers on their cars, where "anti-Arab" would include slogans like
"Those who want rights must also fulfill obligations," or "I like
Rabbi Kahane." A Jewish woman did hard jail time in prison for
drawing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed as a pig. [Drawing Jews as
long-nosed caricatures drinking the blood of Arab children is
protected speech though.] You may regard such a cartoon as vulgar and
offensive, but Israel is the only Western democracy where anti-Moslem
cartoonists are jailed (unlike Holland and Denmark!). Salman Rushdie
could be jailed under Israel's speech code..

The criminalization of "bigotry" in Israel is entirely selective.
No Arabs or leftists are jailed or indicted for making anti-Jewish
comments or publishing anti-Semitic tracts or books (such as those by
Tel Aviv University professor Shlomo Sand, which are required reading
at TAU!). Arab students may chant openly on campus support for
suicide bombings against Jews and the campus authorities defend this
as academic freedom. But a Ben Gurion University professor who
expressed the opinion that it may not be healthy for children to be
raised by homosexual couples was fired by BGU president Rivka Carmi.
THAT, you see, was intolerable bigotry.

Arabs calling upon Iran to drop nuclear weapons on Tel Aviv is
protected speech in Netanyahu's Israel. Calling upon Jews not to
lease apartments in Jewish neighborhoods to Arabs will get you
arrested, as will calling on Jewish women not to date Arabs. (Arab
women who date Jewish men of course are subject to honor killings.)
Even calling on men not to date other men might just get you into hot
water. The political establishment in Israel wants the entire country
to be subjected to a national speech code, one that prohibits making
"insensitive" comments, but only those about Arabs (and gays).

I have in the past on occasion commented about soccer hooliganism
in Israel. Like in most of the rest of the world, soccer fans in
Israel get rowdy and vulgar. Some of the soccer teams are those of
Arab towns, and, at matches between Jewish and Arab teams, the fans
tend to yell things at the other side such as "Kill all the Jews" or
"I hate Arabs." I do not approve of such things, and in fact in the
past have proposed that the rest of society deal with the vulgarity by
requiring that all sports events reporting in the media be conducted
in Latin. But I also do not think that those making such catcalls are
breaking any law or deserve to be imprisoned. Washing their mouths
out with soap would be fine with me.

But the Likud regime disagrees. Making moronic "racist" catcalls
at soccer matches is a crime in Netanyahu's Israel, and only when the
catcalls are anti-Arab.

Think I am exaggerating? Take a look at
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/165115

As you see there, the police, no doubt at the orders of the leftist
Attorney General, have started rounding up Jewish catcallers but not
Arab catcallers. "Massacre the Jews" is protected speech in Israel.
Saying "Muhammad was no prophet, just another Arab" however is hate
speech. Two young Jews were arrested by the police for the "crime" of
making this "anti-Arab" catcall at the soccer match.

Now just for the record, the number of "civil rights" groups and
activists, the number of law professors terribly concerned about
freedom of speech, and the number of Israeli Democracy Institute
members who have spoken out against this arbitrary assault against
freedom of speech for Jews is exactly zero!

Here is the INN news story:
Cops Charge Pair With 'Racist Speech' at Soccer Game
Police moved swiftly Monday to indict two Jerusalem residents on
charges of racism over catcalls they made Sunday night at a soccer
game
By David Lev
First Publish: 2/11/2013, 10:06 PM

Police moved swiftly Monday to indict two Jerusalem residents on
charges of racism over catcalls they made Sunday night at a soccer
game Sunday night between Beitar Jerusalem and the Bnei Sakhnin team.
Hundreds of police were present at the game in order to prevent racial
tension, with fans of Beitar and visiting Arab teams often facing off
with each other over insults and threats mounted by each side against
the other.
Beitar fans have complained numerous times that Arab fans visiting the
stadium incite to racism and hatred against Jews, calling for "death
to Israel" and "death to the Jews," and even waving PLO flags. The
media has ignored those complaints, instead focusing on Arab
complaints that Jewish fans call them names or make them feel
unwelcome.
The two fans, 27 and 18 years of age, are accused of getting up and
shouting that they "hate Arabs," and that "Muhammad was no prophet,
just another Arab." Police arrested the two, and filed charges against
them of making use of racist speech. A Jerusalem court released them
until trial, but they were instructed to remain far away from Teddy
Stadium, where Beitar plays its games.
In order to ensure that they follow the rules, the two have been
instructed to report to their police stations during each half of a
game played by Beitar Jerusalem at the stadium.

See also http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/164703 and
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/continued-media-double-standard-against-israel/



2. New anti-Semitic campaign by the Chomsky:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/165145


3. Why Israel is the victim:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/why-israel-is-the-victim/


4. Islamic Apartheid Week:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/islamic-apartheid-week/


5. The Fisher resignation:
http://www.jewishexponent.com/a-look-back-for-bank-of-israel's-departing-head


6. The Whitewashing of Hate:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Daniel%20Bar-Tal%20-%20Defending%20Arab%20Terror.htm

Thursday, February 07, 2013

Questions And Answers About 'Peace'

Questions And Answers About 'Peace'
By Steven Plaut

Q: With Obama about to visit the country, should Israel agree to
attend new negotiation sessions with the Palestinian Authority?

A: No. Nothing positive can come out of it. For twenty years Israel
has been attending "talks" with the Palestinians and these have
achieved absolutely nothing other than Israeli capitulation. In each
round of talks Israel has given away more and more assets and made an
ever-growing number of concessions, getting nothing in return.

Q: Why give up hope that the Palestinians will agree to some sort of deal?

A: Because they have yet to comply with a single punctuation mark in
any of the agreements they have already signed.

Q: So what should Israel offer the Palestinians?

A: Nothing at all.

Q: Nothing?

A: Israel should make demands instead of making offers of concessions.
It should make no new offers of anything until long lists of its own
demands are fully met.

Q: But how then can Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians?

A: It can't. Making endless concessions has no more chance of
achieving peace than offering nothing. In other words, since the
Palestinians are uninterested in peace, no offer of any sort will
produce peace, and therefore they should be offered nothing at all.

Q: What is the best way to pursue a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

A: By abandoning all attempts to pursue a solution. The pursuit of
"solutions" has been the root of all evil in the Middle East these
past two decades. Israel should stop looking for solutions and instead
pursue military victory.

Q: Do you seriously want Israel to send troops back into Gaza after
the redeployment by Sharon and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza?

A: Yes, of course. It was obvious at the time of the Israeli
unilateral withdrawal that military reoccupation of Gaza was only a
matter of time, inevitable and necessary. The sooner it is done, the
better.

Q: Doesn't Israeli occupation cause terrorism?

A: No, removal of Israeli occupation causes terrorism.

Q: What should Israel offer Syria?

A: The right to retain Damascus and other Syrian territory east of the
Golan Heights in exchange for Syria's abandoning its demands for the
"return" of the Golan Heights.

Q: Do you seriously expect Syria to agree to that?

A: No.

Q: How should Israel deal with terrorism?

A: First and foremost, by recognizing that there is no NON-MILITARY
solution to the problems of terrorism.

Q: What should Israel do with terrorists?

A: Summarily execute them without trial whenever they are captured
while engaged in violence. Capital punishment should be instituted
for all other terrorists.

Q: How should Israel deal with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad?

A: By killing as many of their members as it can.

Q: What is the best strategy Israel can adopt with regard to the Gaza
Strip and the West Bank?

A: R&D, or Reoccupation and De-nazification.

Q: How should Israel deal with the Qassam rockets?

A: By R&D, or Reoccupation and De-nazification. There is no way the
Qassams will be halted through "talks." They can only be halted by
Israel's reestablishment of complete military control over the Gaza
Strip.

Q: Should Israel return Jewish settlers to Gush Katif in Gaza?

A: Yes, of course.

Q: What should Israel do about settlements on the West Bank?

A: Build more of them. It's the best way to take Palestinian statehood
off the table once and for all. In any future deal based on "limited
autonomy" – which was of course the original concept Israel accepted
at Camp David – "settlements" will represent no impediment at all to
implementation.

Q: How should Israel deal with Hezb'Allah?

A: By helping to resolve the parking congestion problems in the towns
and villages of southern Lebanon that are strongholds of Hezb'Allah
and loyal to it. That is, by constructing large new parking lots
there.

Q: How should Israel deal with domestic Arab radicals?

A: Israeli Arabs openly identifying with the enemies of Israel or
endorsing terrorism should be stripped of their Israeli citizenship
and deported. All Arabs sitting in the parliament, working as senior
civil servants or as judges must be required to take an oath of
allegiance, on a sacred book of their religion, to Israel as a Zionist
state. The extended families of any Arabs involved in terrorism or
anti-Jewish violence should be deported and their property seized.

Q: What about the Temple Mount?

A: The PLO must be completely stripped of control over it.

Q. How can "hope for peace" be created in the Middle East?

A: By eliminating all hopes among the Arabs that they will destroy Israel.

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Bernie Madoff’s Ben Gurion University Connection

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/bernie-madoffs-ben-gurion-university-connection/


Bernie Madoff's Ben Gurion University Connection
Posted By Steven Plaut On February 7, 2013

(Open web page for links)
Ben Gurion University in Israel is probably best known for being home
to many of the worst far-leftist anti-Israel radical faculty members
in the country, people like Neve Gordon, Oren Yiftachel, and David
Newman. While it has some serious scholars, mainly in the sciences and
engineering, the social sciences and humanities departments there are
by and large centers for leftist indoctrination and anti-Israel
agitprop. The entire Department of Politics consists of anti-Israel
extremists, and its academic standards are so pathetically low that an
international panel of experts recently called for shutting it down
altogether. Now it has been learned that the University is also
up-to-its-neck involved in the Bernard Madoff mega-scandal. Indeed, it
appears that part of the salaries for Neve Gordon and his ilk come
from funds stolen by Bernard Madoff from his victims and transferred
to BGU.
In recent months many details have emerged about the connections
between Ben Gurion University and the Madoff scandal. In particular,
attention is focusing on the role of Israeli lawyer Yair Green, who
currently serves as the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the
Board of Governors of Ben Gurion University. BGU was a major
beneficiary of donations transferred to it by Green, whose source was
money stolen by Madoff. The University has indicated no plans or
willingness to return any of the stolen funds.
Green is being investigated in the United States and in Israel; he has
been indicted in the United States by the court-appointed trustee
Irving Picard, who is in charge of unraveling and cleaning up the
disaster left over by the Madoff Affair. That Affair involved the
largest Ponzi scam in human history, in which losses to investors
amounted to more than $50 billion. While Madoff's victims came from
across the spectrum, a very large portion of them were Jewish
institutions, philanthropies, and individuals. Green is suspected of
being involved in several funds with close ties to the Madoff
operations, and also operating a "charity fund" in Israel that made
donations to Israeli universities and other institutions using funds
stolen by Madoff from his victims.
Bernard Madoff, it will be recalled, operated a gargantuan Ponzi
"investment" scam. A bit like chain letters and pyramid schemes, a
"Ponzi scheme" is one in which investor funds are basically moved
about by the operator from investor to investor to create the delusion
of profits being earned, as the operator skims off substantial amounts
for himself and his partners. When it collapses, investors lose most
or all of their investments. The Madoff scam produced enormous damages
and losses, but also produced some beneficiaries, including Green
himself and Ben Gurion University.
BGU's Green was connected in a number of different ways to the Madoff
operations, including as the managing director of the "Magnify"
corporation, a shady investment fund registered in Panama. That fund
was originally set up by one Albert Igoin, a Romanian-born French
banker and financial manager with close ties to Madoff. After serving
in the French underground during World War II, Igoin was the right
hand man of a French communist party leader. French intelligence
believed he operated as a Soviet spy in France. He was under constant
surveillance by French counter-intelligence, and the US refused to
allow him to enter its borders.
At some point Igoin lost interest in Stalinism and instead went into
finance. He did exceptionally well. He later teamed up with Madoff
back in the 1970s. Igoin was deeply involved in the Madoff operations,
and "Magnify" was involved in channeling funds to and from the Madoff
"investment house."
Green not only ran "Magnify," but also some other funds or operations
in which Ingoin was involved, including Primero and Strand, based in
the Virgin Islands. In 1988 Green set up with Igoin the so-called
Yeshaya Horowitz Association, which funded applied research projects
in Israel. It is named after an 18th century kabbalist and Rabbi. Its
stated purpose was to channel donations to Israeli universities,
hospitals and other institutions.
Before the scandal, the Horowitz Association had raised between 100
and 200 million dollars, mainly for Israeli universities. Press
reports claimed that it lost $800 million in the collapse of Madoff's
scheme, although all or almost all of those funds were simply money
siphoned off to it from Madoff, not trading profits or investment
earnings.
Green was also the direct beneficiary of funds handled by his
operations, including a payment of over three million dollars from the
"Magnify" fund. Green's children also received cash "gifts." Green
claimed that some of these came from the daughter of Albert Igouin,
who now lives in Europe. But when contacted by Israel's Channel Ten,
she denied even knowing who Green is or having met him. Igoin himself
died in 1995.
Green began raising funds for Ben Gurion University while the Madoff
scheme grew. In exchange, he was first granted an honorary PhD by the
University and later appointed chairman of the executive committee of
the University's Board of Governors by its leftist President Rivka
Carmi, a post he still fills. Green also developed political ties with
Israeli politicians, especially from the Left. He has close ties with
Israeli President Shimon Peres and with assorted Labor Party activists
and leaders, including Avishai Braverman, past president of BGU. The
Labor Party's one-time Minister of Education Yuli Tamir appointed
Green to sit in the country's Council on Higher Education. Peres
received funds from Green and granted him honors in exchange.
Ben Gurion University was not the only beneficiary of Green's
activities. So was the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Among the
members of the board of the Horowitz Association, overseeing the
distribution of funds, was Professor Hanoch Gutfreund, the
ex-President of the Hebrew University (who is also on the
international board of the far-leftist "New Israel Fund"). The
Horowitz Association made large contributions to the "President's
Assembly" run by Israeli President Shimon Peres.
The Green-Madoff connections were exposed in a special television
exposé a few months back on Israel's Channel Ten in its "Hamakor"
documentary, a show roughly analogous to "60 Minutes" in the US.
Channel Ten and the Nana news web site claim that Yair Green siphoned
off millions of dollars in money scammed by Madoff from his victims,
suggesting that this was some sort of hush money to hold his tongue
about Madoff's behavior. He held repeated face-to-face meetings with
Madoff.
Green had registered his Horowitz Association as a non-profit
institution in Israel. When the registrar for non-profits demanded to
know what the source was for the funds that Green was conveying to
recipients in Israel, Green refused to answer, claiming the donor had
required anonymity. It turned out that the only source of the funds
was the Madoff "investment house." Channel Ten claims Green received
$3.15 million to his own bank account in 2002 from Magnify (in
addition to other payments received). In 2005 each of Green's children
received a payment of $100,000 from "Magnify." Green claims the
millions were fees due him for legal services.
After a trustee was appointed to handle the cleanup of the financial
mess left behind by the collapse of the Madoff scheme, the trustee
filed a suit this past summer (on June 15, 2012) against a group of
defendants, including both Green and the Horowitz Association
regarding jurisdiction, and the petition was granted. Picard insists
that Green and Madoff had an unusually close and warm personal
relationship.
The suit charges that Green was among those who received large amounts
of payouts from the Madoff fund, funds that had in effect been stolen
from Madoff's victims and were siphoned off to Green (and other
defendants). One of the defendants was the "Magnify Corporation."
The suit went on to charge this: According to the Trustee, "Green
and/or Brunner exercised control" over the Accountholder Defendants'
accounts. Further, "Green and Brunner had virtually unfettered
discretion to manipulate the Accountholder Defendants' accounts," and
they "exploited their relationships with Madoff" to do so. Allegedly
taking advantage of that power, "Green and Brunner . . . funneled
millions of dollars of other people's money . . . to themselves, their
families, Yeshaya, other charitable institutions throughout Israel,
and other individuals and entities being investigated by the Trustee
around the world."
The suit charges that group of funds run by Green and Brunner "was
inconsistent with legitimate trading activity," as these accounts were
rife with "indicia of irregularity." Allegedly ignoring these indicia
of irregularity, Brunner and Green exercised control over the
entities' accounts "to siphon money from BLMIS for the benefit of the
Defendants, particularly Yeshaya, as well as their family members and
various Israeli institutions." '
In spite of his role in the Madoff affair, Green continues to attempt
to raise funds for Israeli institutions. And especially for Ben Gurion
University.

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/bernie-madoffs-ben-gurion-university-connection/
*****

If you would like to demand that Ben Gurion University return all the
stolen funds it received out of the Madoff Affair, then please write
to

The Council for Higher Education in Israel
(governmental body that funds and supervises Israeli universities and colleges)
Prof. Manuel Trachtenberg
Chairman, Council on Higher Education
Email: manuel@post.tau.ac.il
POB 4037, Jerusalem 91040, Israel

Aharon Beit-Halahmi
Planning & Budgeting Committee Chairman
Council for Higher Education
Email: betha@eurofund.co.il
P.O.B. 4037, Jerusalem 91040, Israel
Tel: 02-5679911
Fax: 02-5679969
E-mail: info@che.org.il

Ministry of Education
The Honorable Gideon Sa'ar
Acting Minister of Education
Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports
Kiryat Ben Gurion, Jerusalem
Email: gsaar@knesset.gov.il
Additional Email: sar@education.gov.il
Phone: 972-2-6408131
Fax: 972-2-6753525

Shalomit Amichai
Director General of the Ministry of Education
Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports
Kiryat Ben Gurion, Jerusalem
Email: mankal@education.gov.il

Monday, February 04, 2013

Viginities, Dingbats, Hackers and Spies

1. Shlomo Gazit is a far leftist ex-general who was one of the first
presidents of Ben Gurion University. In fact, he was a key figure in
turning Ben Gurion University into the cesspool of tenured treason and
leftist extremism that it is today.

Gazit has an Op-Ed in Haaretz today (in Hebrew at
http://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/1.1921159 ) in which he calls for
arming the Hezb'Allah terrorists in Lebanon. As you know, a few days
ago Israel blasted to smithereens a convey that was bring new advanced
missiles into Lebanon from Syria for use by the Hezb'Allah. Gazit is
aghast. How dare Israel defend itself! Besides, Assad is such a
villain, opines Gazit, that better his weaponry be in the hands of
anyone else rather than Syria, I guess including Al-Qaeda but
certainly including Hezb'Allah.

Gazit was once upon a time head of Israeli military intelligence, and
the fact that such a moron held such a position explains better than
anything else the failures of military intelligence over the years.
When "Oslo" began, Gazit was one of the first to proclaim the advent
of the New Middle East and the permanent tranquility that would follow
the Beilin initiative. He has also long been a leader in leftwing
fascism and McCarthyist assaults against freedom of speech for
non-leftists in Israel (see
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/shut-down-the-universities-1.309645
).



2. Daniel Pipes maintains a running blog page in which he documents
cases of poetic justice and "instant retribution" in the Middle East,
mainly about Arabs blowing themselves up while trying to murder Jews
and things along similar lines. The page is here:
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009/01/instant-retribution-in-the-middle-east#Fatah
. If you have not read it, it will make your day.

But I think I may have one story of my own of the same caliber!

For those of you who do not think that there is a Higher Intelligence
with a terrific sense of humor in charge of the universe, you will
have trouble explaining the most delightful development of the week in
Israel, the decision by convicted spy Anat Kamm to sue the gotkes off
of Haaretz! As you recall, Kamm was convicted of stealing oodles of
classified documents from the army and passing them on to the Haaretz
reporter Uri Blau, who leaked them. Both Blau and Kamm are ultra
leftists. Well, as reported here
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/anat-kamm-demands-nis-2-million-from-haaretz-for-exposing-her.premium-1.501251
Haaretz is facing suit for 2 million shekels.

Remember that old shtick about "Da Devil made me do it"? Well, Kamm
claims Haaretz tricked and tempted her into the espionage. Blau, by
the way, got off with a wrist slap and Kamm was released early from
house arrest thanks to her good behavior.

According to the story in Haaretz:
Anat Kamm, who is serving three and a half years in prison for leaking
hundreds of classified documents to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau, has
asked the newspaper for NIS 2 million in compensation. Kamm says the
newspaper's actions caused her great harm.
In a letter sent by Kamm's lawyer Ilan Bombach to Haaretz publisher
Amos Schocken a week and a half ago, Bombach wrote: "Kamm views you
and some of the newspaper's employees as directly responsible, or
indirectly, for revealing [her] as the source. This exposure caused my
client enormous damage," he wrote.
For two years Kamm was held under full house arrest and her arrest cut
short her budding career as a journalist for the Walla website as well
as her academic studies, said Bombach.
Attorneys for Haaretz stated: "We have received the letter. It seems
the claims [in the letter] have no real basis."
Kamm passed the documents to Blau on a disk-on-key, which she had
taken from the office of then-head of the IDF's Central Command, Maj.
Gen. Yair Naveh. "She asked [Blau] as a condition for passing on the
documents that he never disclose where they came from," stated the
letter. Kamm was seriously harmed because Haaretz did not protect her
as a source, stated Bombach.
If Kamm does not receive the NIS 2 million as a compromise amount, she
will take the matter to court, warned her lawyer.

3. Oh a group of Syrian hackers broke into the Haaretz web site and
sabotaged it, introducing all sorts of anti-Israel and pro-terror
items. See http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/syria-strikes-back-hackers-break-into-haaretz-emails-threaten-more-attacks.premium-1.500937
.
The mystery of course is how this was detected because the content of
the newspaper did not change at all. I have investigated and have
discovered that the only clear indication that Syrian hackers had
replaced the regular management of Haaretz was that all the newspaper
recipes for pork chops were deleted!


4. In his column from February 1, 2013, Maariv deputy editor Ben Dror
Yemini attacks some Israeli tenured leftists for their campaigns to
paint Israel as a Nazi regime. After reminding readers of the many
attempts by the Eurotrash to describe Israel as the successor state to
Nazi Germany, Yemini focuses on the behavior of Ariella Azoulay, the
"professor" wife of Tel Aviv University professor Adi Ophir. The two
devote their lives to demonizing Israel. (See
http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Alon%20Ben%20Shaul%20-%20Adi%20Ophir%20and%20Ariella%20Azoulay%20-%20The%20Defaming%20Duo.htm
)

Azoulay was denied tenure at Bar Ilan University, since her entire
"academic career" consisted of churning out books of tendentious
photos doctored and manipulated to make Israel look oppressive and
evil. (Never any photos of any Jewish victims of Arab barbarism of
course.) Well, Azoulay and Ophir were among a group of far-leftists
hired by the German-funded far-leftist Minerva Institute, which
operates at Tel Aviv University. They produced a "report," which -
naturally - concludes that Israeli soldiers behave like Nazis. (In
Hebrew, see story
http://www.nrg.co.il/app/index.php?do=blog&encr_id=f2b4c1b55be76d1e6d7b777256ea0370&id=4297
)

When she was denied tenure at Bar Ilan, the usual radical leftist
academics all organized a petition denouncing Bar Ilan as a fascist
intolerant anti-democratic institution because it refused to grant
tenure to Azoulay for the petty reason that she has no academic
publications (see
http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Steve%20Plaut%20-%20Israeli%20Tenured%20Taliban.htm
).

Oh and speaking of Pipesian poetic justice, you will love this
story about Azoulay:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Ariella%20Azoulay%20-%20jilted.htm


5. In his biography of Stalin, Oxford University don Robert Conquest
provides the following quote from Stalin. As you probably know, when
the Red Army entered non-Soviet countries (before converting them to
Soviet colonies), the soldiers typically went on rape rampages. Not
just in Germany. In Berlin nearly every human in the city with two X
chromosomes was raped by the Soviet soldiers. When asked about this,
Stalin replied that the Soviet Union was more in need of military
victories than of virginities. (page 266)

Now in recent years the Radical Israeli Left has been going through
all sorts of ideological contortions to make excuses for the many
cases of sexual molestation and rape of Western supporters by
Palestinians (see
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/steven-plaut/how-supporters-of-palestinian-terrorism-are-murdered-and-raped-by-their-palestinian-sponsors/
). These are women who come to the West Bank to help support
Palestinian terrorism but find themselves manhandled, and I do not
mean mere groping. The Left has been holding debates over whether to
speak out about all that. The dominant ideological position though
seems to be that Palestinian "resistance" comes before demands for
decency in behavior towards the fairer sex.

So in other words, the Israeli Left is pretty much saying the same
thing that Stalin said. Military victory (overt the Jews) is more
important than virginities!


6. Architecting Hate:
http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20LondonU%20-%20Eyal%20Weizman%20-%20Agitprop%20Constructed%20on%20Hate.htm

Friday, February 01, 2013

A New Atrocity from Richard Falk

1. A Lesson in Torat Moshe (a little early for Purim):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tciT9bmCMq8


2. You probably have heard that a UN commission has issued a "report"
claiming that Israel's building settlements is a crime and sanctions
must be implemented against Israel. The "report" was written by
Richard Falk for the UN.

It is worth reminding readers just who and what Falk is

http://frontpagemag.com/2009/steven-plaut/collaborators-in-the-war-against-the-jews-richard-a-falk-by-steven-plaut/

(from 2009)

Collaborators in the War Against the Jews: Richard A. Falk – by Steven Plaut

Posted By Steven Plaut On December 4, 2009



It is a bit of a shame that Richard A. Falk, professor emeritus of
International Law and Practice from Princeton, cannot go back in time
in some sort of time machine to right historic wrongs. If he could,
there is no doubt at all that he would revise and re-orchestrate the
Nuremberg Trials conducted by the Allies after World War II so that
the leaders of the United States and Britain were the ones indicted
instead. After all, from 1945 onwards the Allies were guilty of
"occupation." Earlier, they had even dared to use military force
against German terrorism, had caused German civilian deaths in their
earlier military incursions and air bombing campaigns, and then
illegally colonized German territories. If it were up to Falk, the
Nuremberg trials would have been devoted to prosecuting the Jews of
Europe for causing so much trouble for those poor innocent Germans.

Falk is not only one of the worst collaborators in the academic wars
against the Jews, he is also America's leading practitioner of the
Orwellian inversion. For Falk, America is a fascist monstrosity,
while the world's fascist and totalitarian monstrosities are
democratic enclaves of freedom. For him, Israel is a terrorist
aggressor, while the Arab terrorist aggressors are innocent victims
and peace-loving progressives. For him, Israel is a Nazi-like country
seeking genocide, while the genocidal Islamofascists of the Hamas and
their backers are merely protesters against social inequality inside
Israel. For him, terrorist aggression against Jews is really the
pursuit of peace, while self-defense by Israel is criminal, terrorist
aggression and genocide.

So who exactly is Richard Falk? He is basically an Ivy League version
of Ward Churchill. He has described himself as an "assimilationist
Jewish with a virtual denial of even the ethnic side of Jewishness."
According to Martin Peretz of the New Republic, "Yes, let me assure
you, this hater of Israel is a Jew. And, also yes, this hater of
America is an American. " Falk's only interest in his Jewish origins
is when he can use them as a bludgeon against Israel and other Jews.
According to one report, Falk may have converted to the Baha'i
religion. Falk's wife is a Turkish Moslem.

And just what is Falk's agenda? When addressing an audience of
supporters of the anti-Israel organization "Sabeel," Falk thus spoke:
"During a question and answer period after remarks by Richard Falk,
the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the
Palestinian Territories, an audience member urged people to 'vote the
Jewish state out of existence.' Enthusiastic applause erupted up and
down the pews." For Falk, it goes without saying that Israel must be
annihilated. He cannot imagine any form of Middle East "peace" in
which the Jews have not been driven into the sea. In his words, "If
we are to re-imagine peace, we have to stop thinking of the
conventional two-state solution, this idea of two people living in
separate states would be a disaster."

But there is so much more! Falk is a conspiracy nut who is involved up
to his hairline in the "911 Truth" conspiracy cult, which claims that
the Bush Administration was actually behind the 911 attacks on the US.
Falk has repeated over and over his "suspicion" that high American
officials, conniving with nefarious Jewish neo-conservatives, were the
real culprits who organized the attacks on the World Trade Center and
on the Pentagon. Falk wrote a sycophantic foreword for a conspiracy
"book" by one David Ray Griffin, "The New Pearl Harbor." Falk
championed that "book" and helped get it a publisher. Here is Falk's
take on 911:


"As far as I can tell, the real explanation is a widely shared fear of
what sinister forces might lay beneath the unturned stones of a full
and honest investigation of 9/11. Ever since the assassinations in the
1960s of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X there has
been waged a powerful campaign against 'conspiracy theory' that has
made anyone who dares question the official story to be branded as a
kook or some kind of unhinged troublemaker. In this climate of
opinion, any political candidate for high office who dared raise
doubts about the official version of 9/11 would immediately be branded
as unfit, and would lose all political credibility. It is impossible
to compete in any public arena in the United States if a person comes
across as a '9/11 doubter.'"

Writing a in the Middle East Quarterly (Winter 2002), "Professors of
Palestine," Martin Kramer observed that "extracting…ex cathedra
rulings from Falk is easy business." Kramer added: "I hadn't seen
Falk's authority invoked so reverentially since my own student days at
Princeton. Back then, he was the leading campus enthusiast of the
Ayatollah Khomeini. 'The depiction of Khomeini as fanatical,
reactionary, and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and
happily false,' he wrote in 1979. 'Iran may yet provide us with a
desperately-needed model of humane government for a third-world
country.' I well recall watching him preside over a 'teach-in' in
support of the revolution, which was going to end human rights abuses
in Iran. And I recall student groupies applauding fanatically, as if
in a trance."

Falk's publication record is a one-sided indictment of everything
Western and a one-sided exoneration of everything anti-Western. He
was an early sycophant of the Ayatollah Khomeini, publishing in the
New York Times on February 16, 1979 a piece titles "Trusting
Khomeini." The New Republic claims Falk considered the Ayatollah to
be the Messiah. Falk also was a cheerleader for the Khmer Rouge. He
regularly writes for viciously anti-American and anti-Semitic web
sites such as "Counterpunch" and "Znet."

Kramer adds, "Falk is famous for his one-size-fits-all definition of
war crimes and crimes against humanity." So, "in 1998…he warned
officials responsible for implementing the United Nations sanctions
against Iraq of their 'criminal accountability for complicity in the
commission of crimes against humanity.' The persistence of American
leaders in carrying out the sanctions regime 'subjects them to
potential criminal responsibility.'"

Naturally, Falk also sees conspiracies being perpetrated by
Neo-conservatives (meaning Jews) against far-leftist academics. He
opines: "There's no doubt that there's a concerted right-wing attempt
to intimidate professors who advocate critical views, especially on
Middle East issues and on the Bush presidency." To drive home his
point, he served as a cheerleader and apologist for Ward Churchill
when the latter dismissed the American victims of 9-11 as "little
Eichmanns."

Falk has been ferociously opposed to the Allied liberation of Iraq.
He described the invasion as a "war of aggression" by the United
States and its allies, and – naturally – also compares it to the
crimes of German Nazis in World War II. Orwellian inversions
involving Nazis are Falk's favorite metaphor, and he seems to compose
several before breakfast each day. Elsewhere he has stated, "It is
not an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of
Palestinians with the criminalized Nazi record of collective
atrocity." He compared Attorney General like John Ashcroft to the
Nazi conspirators who set the Reichstag on fire.

Falk dismisses the Domestic Security Enhancement Act and the Patriot
Act as "sweeping powers" that represent a "slide toward fascism." He
routinely denounces America for being an imperialist power, an empire.
In 2003 he published a diatribe, "Will the Empire be Fascist?"
There he insists that terror warnings and threat assessments are tools
used by the American government to frighten and control the public.
He has demanded that American sovereignty be constricted and subjected
to a "Global Peoples' Assembly," a governing body whose members would
"represent the worldwide voice of the people in action and decision
making." You know, people like Hugo Chavez and Muammar Khaddafi, who
would decide there what America can and cannot do.

But Falk's special animosity is reserved for Israel. He has been
trying for decades to get Israel obliterated. And that track record
qualified him to serve as the special investigator into "Israeli war
crimes" on behalf of the United Nations! In 2007 Falk published,
"Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust," in which he wrote that it
was not an "irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of
Palestinians (by Israel)" with the "criminalized Nazi record of
collective atrocity." His title is a thin plagiarism of the title of
a book by Robert Bork, "Slouching Towards Gemorrah." The article may
be Falk's most openly anti-Semite diatribe. In it, he accuses Israel
of mistreating Palestinians on a scale comparable to the Nazi
extermination of Jews. He writes:


"Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of
Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective
atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially
disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on
the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community
to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that
this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a
rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to
international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current
genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy. If ever
the ethos of 'a responsibility to protect,' recently adopted by the UN
Security Council as the basis of 'humanitarian intervention' is
applicable, it would be to act now to start protecting the people of
Gaza from further pain and suffering."

Falk then went on to argue that the plight of the Palestinians is
worse than the victims of genocide in Rwanda: "But Gaza is morally
far worse (than Rwanda), although mass death has not yet resulted."
That single sentence may be the most telling of all the inanities Falk
has ever invented.

Jonathan Kay, writing in the Canadian National Post, dismissed Falk as
an anti-Jewish bigot and as "an anti-Israel hit man:"

"Falk accuses Israel of having 'genocidal tendencies,' and calls the
international response to the situation in Gaza "morally far worse"
than its response to the 1994 Rwanda genocide (death toll: 800,000)
and Srebrenica — despite the fact that there is not a single recorded
instance of Israel implementing a program of deliberately killing
civilians in Gaza, let alone mass murder."

The article concludes by declaring, "To persist with [Israeli
policies] is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire
Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole. It
is this prospect that makes appropriate the warning of a Palestinian
holocaust in the making, and should remind the world of the famous
post-Nazi pledge of 'never again.' What a scandal to imagine that
this ignorant ideologue is the expert in whom the UNHRC has entrusted
its fact-finding in Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, notwithstanding
his shrill opinions, Falk clearly doesn't actually know anything about
Gaza and West Bank." No, Falk is not beneath commandeering every
iota of Jewish suffering in history to demonize Israel, even the
"Never Again" slogan coined following the Holocaust in World War II.

There is almost no distortion of the truth that Falk will not embrace
when he jihads against Israel. He defends the "election" of the Hamas
in Gaza as a "fair election." His evidence? Jimmy Carter said so.
He deliberately inverts history in the worst Orwellian manner. The
Hamas has been seeking ceasefires with Israel, but Israel keeps
violating them, according to the learned oprofessor. Israel and the
US are all to blame for the rise of Hamas hegemony in Gaza, opines
Falk, because Israel failed to capitulate sufficiently to the heads of
the PLO and the US failed to coerce Israel to do so: "This latest turn
in policy needs to be understood in the wider context of the Israeli
refusal to reach a reasonable compromise with the Palestinian people
since 1967." The reasonable compromise the Palestinians demand of
course is Israel's complete extermination.

In 2001, when he retired from Princeton, the misnamed U.N. Commission
on Human Rights decided to send a biased "commission of inquiry" to
bash Israel over its supposed violation of human rights. Falk was one
of three members chosen. The other two were also anti-Israel: John
Dugard, a South African from Leiden University in the Netherlands who
considers Israel a racist apartheid-like regime, and Kamal Hussein,
former Bangladeshi foreign minister. Alan Dershowitz dismissed Falk
as a bigot and as someone who made up his mind long before he began
any "investigation." In Dershowitz' view, appointing Falk is
comparable to the following: "Imagine the UN appointing David Duke to
report on how Blacks are victimizing Whites, or Hugo Chavez to report
on American foreign policy, or Mohammad Ahmadinejad to investigate
whether the Holocaust occurred."

In 2008 the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) officially
appointed Falk to a six-year term as a "United Nations Special
Rapporteur" on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian
territories occupied since 1967." I guess Noam Chomsky wasn't
available. US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton explained why Falk was
selected: "He was picked for a reason, and the reason is not to have
an objective assessment — the objective is to find more ammunition to
go after Israel."

This new commission reached its conclusions long before it was even
convened. In Falk's words, the purpose of the commission was this:
"The central issue is to ask whether Israel has used excessive force
in responding to the Palestinian political demonstrations." Note
that he and his sidekicks had no interest in the countless terrorist
atrocities and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians launched by
Palestinians. In fact, Falk essentially came out in favor of
Palestinian terrorism even before the commission began its work: "One
is evaluating whether the conditions of occupation are such as to give
the Palestinians some kind of right of resistance. And if they have
that right, then what are the limits to that right?" The only
difference between terrorism and "resistance" depends entirely on
whether on not Falk endorses it. Falk used the same opportunity to
denounce Israel as a colonialist entity.

In May, 2008, and recalling his early campaigns against Israel on
behalf of the UN, Israel refused to allow Falk to enter the country at
all as a UN representative. He tried to enter again in December, was
detained for 30 hours in Tel Aviv airport and then given the bum's
rush out. Falk joined the tiny club of anti-Semites so extreme that
Israel refuses to allow them to enter the country. Of "academics"
barred from entering Israel, Falk shares that honor only with Neo-Nazi
Norman Finkelstein, who was evicted from Israel thanks to
Finkelstein's intimate ties to the Hezb'Allah terrorists. (Even Noam
Chomsky and numerous other blatant anti-Semites enter Israel all the
time with no problem, and many lecture at Israeli universities.
Israel only evicts the worst collaborators with terrorism!)

When Falk was evicted, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior explicitly
cited Falk's long record of anti-Israel hate propaganda in its
decision to ban his entry. Simona Halperin, the director of Israel's
International Organization and Human Rights department, called Falk
"completely unobjective," citing his comparisons of Israelis to Nazis
and of Israel's actions against the Palestinians to the Holocaust.
Writing in the Israeli daily Maariv, Uri Yablonka commented on the
expulsion of Falk: "It is not every day that the Foreign Ministry
decides to ban a senior United Nations emissary from entering Israel,
especially when the person involved is a Jewish academic. But in the
case of Prof. Richard Falk from the United States, Israel made an
exception. This was because in the past Falk voiced support for
suicide attacks and compared Israel's activity with that of the
Nazis." The editor of Maariv dismissed Falk as a repulsive maniac.

When Israel launched its anti-terror campaign in Gaza in 2008, "Cast
Lead," Falk repeatedly and mechanically denounced all Israeli defense
operations as "war crimes." Evidently the only form of Jewish
self-defense against Hamas rockets that Falk is willing to approve is
total capitulation. Even grabbing ships full of arms bound for
Islamofascist terrorists is "criminal," according to Falk, and an
abuse of Palestinian rights. He repeatedly called for
Nuremberg-style indictments of Israeli leaders for "war crimes." Falk
is not above outright falsification when it comes to his prettifying
the Hamas or demonizing Israel.

As for Falk's other political associations, Kathy Shaidle lists some
of these: "Falk is a prominent member of the International Association
of Democratic Lawyers, which the CIA once characterized as 'one of the
most useful Communist front organizations at the service of the Soviet
Communist Party.' Today Falk chairs the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation,
whose recommended strategy for combating terrorism is to increase U.S.
aid to those countries that act as a breeding ground for terrorists."
The New Republic's Martin Peretz insists that he "finds human rights
abuses Right and Left but on second thought only Right."

Kathie Shaidle sums Falk up thus: "Were Falk simply an obscure crank,
his views about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 could be
written off as the rantings of a sadly delusional individual.
However, Falk's enthusiasm for conspiracy theories casts grave doubts
about the levels of objectivity and competence he will bring to his
new 'investigative' position at the United Nations. Unlike the
scientific method or other rational methods of deduction, conspiracy
theories work backwards from frequently tenuous 'evidence,' in order
to 'prove' the conspiracist's pre-determined theories. Richard Falk
publicly has sided with radical Islam over America and Israel for
three decades, with little consideration for facts and evidence.
Given that, and his gullible support for bizarre 9/11 'revelations,'
critics have good reason to suspect that, as a UN 'investigator,' Falk
will leave a great deal to be desired."

As the Hamas' point man serving the UN commission, Falk did indeed
deliver the goods, as expected.

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