http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/israeli-prof-denied-honorary-degree-for-being-too-right-wing/

Israeli Prof. Denied Honorary Degree for Being too 'Right-Wing'

Posted By Steven Plaut On January 22, 2014

Dimitry Shumsky is a young anti-Israel far Leftist whose diatribes litter the far Leftist fringe media in Israel, especially the leftist daily Haaretz.  Since 2009, according to his own published resume, he has held a tenure-track appointment at the Department of the History of the Jewish People at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Shumsky in Haaretz on January 20, 2014 joins the cat fight of the far Left in Israel over the decision by the University of Haifa to veto an honorary PhD to Prof. Robert Aumann.

The Nobel-Prize winning economist Aumann was denied an honorary PhD by the University of Haifa on grounds that he holds conservative political opinions.  It was a great victory for the campaign of the Far Left in Israel against freedom of thought and freedom of speech.  Prof. Ariel Rubinstein, a distinguished economist in Israel, denounced the decision and denounced speakers at a conference at Tel Aviv University who defended the operation of a thought police in the Aumann affair.

Rubinstein is himself quite far off to the Left.  However his Op-Ed in Haaretz a couple of weeks back criticizing those who insist on a political thought police in Israeli academia triggered indignation in the caverns of the Ultra-Left.  Among those chiming in was Tel Aviv University Professor Rivka Feldhay.  You may recall Feldhay as the Tel Aviv University leftist that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted  NOT be invited to participate in a state reception in Germany.  The reason is that Feldhay had signed petitions demanding that Israeli soldiers engage in mutiny and insurrection to force the government to accept diktats from the Left about the "occupation." After decades of the Left insisting that everyone should have the "right" to boycott anyone, including settlements, Israeli universities, and all of Israel, the same Left suddenly was aghast that Netanyahu had decided to "boycott" Feldhay.  (Actually he did not boycott her, he just chose not to invite her.)  Feldhay responded with shrill hysteria in a number of Op-Ed articles.

Well the same Feldhay led the purge against poor Prof. Rubinstein for his incorrect thinking.  She pronounced him a "radical right-winger" — this entirely on the grounds that he teaches economics and so understands why communism does not work.   She was followed by other leftist sheep bleating their agreement with her.

Finally Shumsky chimes in his own two cents in Haaretz.  His is an intriguing argument.  According to Shumsky (no relation to Chomsky), people like Ariel Rubinstein are part of the mechanism of "occupation oppression" when they criticize the "occupation."   Really!   He writes there: "One of the most efficient ways to perpetuate the occupation and in so doing endanger the existence of Israel and Zionism altogether is to convert internal Israeli opposition to the occupation into an integral part of the occupation itself." Huh?

His evidence is that Rubinstein opposes the operation of Ariel University in the West Bank but also supports the freedom of speech for Prof. Aumann.   As you can see, Shumsky's contorted argument is reminiscent of the "pinkwashing" charges against Israel, which hold that tolerance towards homosexuals in Israel is all part of a Zionist conspiracy to oppress "Palestinians." The logic of Shumsky's piece exceeds anything since that notorious MA thesis at the Hebrew University supervised by Eyal Ben-Ari (yes, the convicted sexual predator professor), which found that the fact that Israeli troops never rape Arab women is proof that the Jews are so racist. Shumsky, by the way, has a long track record of supporting the bi-national Rwanda-style "one state solution," in which Israel will cease to exist altogether. His presence on the faculty of the Hebrew University is quite instructive about the academic standards in effect there.

In a related matter, you may recall the heroic struggle of Yisrael Shiran.  He was a high school teacher in Israel fired by Labor Party Minister of Education Yuli Tamir from his teaching job because he wrote a letter requesting that the political ideas of Yitzhak Rabin not be taught as unchallenged dogma in the schools.  Rabin's ideas are controversial, especially regarding Oslo, and opposition to those ideas was just as legitimate as endorsement of them.  Tamir would hear nothing of that.  In her bolshevik response, she had Shiran fired.  McCarthyist censorship by the Left at its best!  Shiran later sued the Ministry of Education for his being fired and was awarded 400,000 NIS in damages.

I mention this because it sheds light on the newest cause célèbre of the Far Left in Israel.  Led by Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew, which has devoted much of its pages to the story in recent days, the Far Left is suddenly all upset about the "suppression of the free speech rights" of a high school teacher in Tivon, near Haifa.  It seems that Adam Verete made a habit of using his bully pulpit in his classroom at the high school to attempt to indoctrinate his students into his far-leftist anti-Israel ideology.  A female student in his class filed a formal complaint, his case is under investigation by the authorities, and there are rumors of threats that he be fired.

Haaretz and its satellites have been having a field day. "Suppression!" they scream.  "Fascism!" Hmmm.

Let us first note that any threats or investigations regarding Verete are because he was misusing the classroom to indoctrinate and preach ideology, not because he was preaching LEFTIST ideology.  He would have been just as out of line if he were misusing his position in the classroom to preach any other ideology.  Educators are not supposed to use the classroom for ideological indoctrination.  The difference of course is that, if he had been fired for preaching, say, Kahanist ideology, Haaretz would be the first on the block to cheer and congratulate the authorities for the firing.

Haaretz only has a problem when far-leftists are prevented from converting their classrooms into indoctrination camps. When Ram Cohen, a high school principle in Tel Aviv, was practicing on-the-job indoctrination in communism and endorsement of the communist party, Haaretz defended him. When the Council on Higher Education attempted to shut down the Department of Politics at Ben Gurion University on grounds that it was a totalitarian substandard center for anti-Israel propaganda and indoctrination, Haaretz was out front defending the department.  So was Rivka Feldhay.  Not a single tenured leftist in Israel has spoken out against SLAPP suit harassments by leftists in Israel to suppress the freedom of speech of critics of leftists.

But guess which educator Haaretz and the leftist herd never uttered a single word to defend.  You are correct; the answer is Yisrael Shiran.  Not only Haaretz maintained a studied silence.  When I posted a challenge on the "Israel Social Science" chat list of academics, calling on Israeli law professors to speak out in defense of Shiran and to condemn his firing, not a single one did.  The position by the Radical Left supporting the decision by Haifa University to make Prof. Aumann a political pariah is no less instructive.

The radical Left in Israel, including the tenured fifth column, continues to promote the idea that freedom of speech should be restricted to those who agree with the radical Left. And them alone.

++++++

Afterword:   Adam Verete is a member of the communist party in Israel and endorsed that party in his classroom.  Haaretz this morning has a new spin.   It claims that the director of the ORT school system in Israel, which operates the school in question, used to be a member of Naftali Bennett's party, the Jewish Home.  In the "mind" of Haaretz editors, this proves that Verete was the "victim" of a school director who once belonged to a party disliked by Haaretz editors.  

    Why shouldn't teachers be permitted to raise ethical questions in the classroom and challenge accepted opinions, asks Haaretz today.  You can see the editorial at http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.569877.

    There is only one itsy bitsy problem with the Haaretz demand that diversity of opinion and challenges to accepted ideas be promoted by having communist teachers indoctrinate students in their classrooms in Israel.  The one place where NO diversity of opinion is ever permitted, and where NO challenges to the correct thinking of the Far Left may be tolerated, is in Haaretz.

2.   JNS News Service

[Repost] The Un-Greening of Tu B'Shvat

Almost everything that most people "know" about Tu B'Shvat is totally wrong and completely false. Tu B'Shvat, the 15th day of the month of Shvat in the Jewish calendar, has been deconstructed in recent years and converted into a holiday of ecology and environmentalist political agitprop.

From Steven Plaut

Almost everything that most people "know" about Tu B'Shvat is totally wrong and completely false. Tu B'Shvat, the 15th day of the month of Shvat in the Jewish calendar, has been deconstructed in recent years and converted into a holiday of ecology and environmentalist political agitprop. 

It is waved about by the Tikkun Olam Pagans as a political banner to demand that all Jews support the Green political agenda. The wacko pagan "Eco-Judaism" movement, including its Tikkun dervishes, has made it their holiest of all holidays, a day to hug bushes and worship tree spirits and nature. And Jewish assimilationist liberals in the United States use it as theological ammunition to disarm anyone criticizing environmentalist fanatics.

Tu B'Shvat is not a holiday of ecology, and has nothing to do with environmentalism. It also is not a day on which Jews celebrate pristine forests, national parks and wilderness areas. It is, if anything, the very opposite. It is the celebration of agri-business and the exploitation of nature for human consumption. 

Tu B'Shvat is nominally the "New Year of the Trees" (called this in the Talmud), but I doubt if one in 100 liberal, politically-active Jews can correctly explain in what sense it is, or what this means; and I doubt that any follower of Arthur Waskow or reader of Tikkun magazine on the planet could explain these things correctly. 

Tu B'Shvat is decidedly not the time when Jews celebrate the blossoming of trees. It is the middle of winter, when, even in Israel, almost no trees are blossoming. (The almond tree is an exception.) The custom of going out and planting trees on Tu B'shvat is a modern deconstruction of the meaning of the day and is, in fact, rather silly. Tu B'Shvat is the worst part of the year in which to try to plant trees and get them to grow. I have no doubt that 80% of the famous saplings planted on Tu B'Shvat by Israeli school children never really take root and grow.

If anything, Tu B'Shvat is the "New Year of Trees" precisely because it is when trees are not blossoming and when it is the very worst time to be planting saplings. Tu B'Shvat is the time when the agricultural year for produce begins, for religious counting purposes. 

For example, religious laws having to do with farm produce, such as the sabbatical of the land every seventh year, or the tithes on annual produce donated to the Levites or the Temple, or the counting of growth years to determine when fruit becomes edible, all require a chronological basis for counting. The logical time to start counting is exactly when nothing in nature is happening or growing, in exactly the same way that the time to start counting a New Moon (for the New Month) is when it is not there at all. It makes the division into annual cycles easier and more logical for counting and taxation purposes.

Tu B'Shvat is a happy time simply because farmers are about to begin a new agri-cycle. This is so in exactly the same sense as the "New Year for Farm Animals", also discussed in the Talmud although completely forgotten by almost all Jews, which starts on the first day of Elul in late summer. 

Tu B'Shvat is a fiscal-tax New Year, more like April 15 in the US (the day you pay your taxes) than a Save the Earth and the Whales Day. Not only is it not a harvest day, it is a day when most trees are bare, and where dry fruits are eaten because there are so few fresh fruits in season, even in Israel. (Never mind that in Israel these days, almost all the dry Tu B'Shvat fruits come from Turkey.)

Because it is a day in which the annual business cycle in agri-business begins, there is not the slightest smidgen of an environmentalist political agenda in the real meaning of the day. Because it is a celebration of farming, it certainly cannot be used as religious artillery ammunition by those who demand that pristine rain forests and wilderness areas be preserved and their conversion into farms be prevented. In fact, Tu B'Shvat is really no holiday at all in any sense, and does not have any liturgy or prayers of its own, other than the routine blessings over foods one says every day. People who want to preserve national parks and natural areas are free to lobby for these, but they will find no theological support for their position in the real Tu B'Shvat.

So why do so many people think Tu B'Shvat has something to do with preventing greenhouse gasses or promoting animal rights or preserving rain forests? Because the Tikkun Olam Pagans, the assimilationist Leftism-as-Judaism proponents of pseudo-Judaism in the Diaspora and in Israel, have intentionally hijacked and distorted its meaning altogether.

Want to celebrate Tu B'Shvat in the real manner it was intended? Chop down a tree for lumber, slaughter some farm animals for dinner, build a farm in the forest, and fish to your heart's content.

1.   Generations from now, when historians are trying to make sense of the enormous stupidity of Israel in the Oslo era, no doubt much attention will be focused on the role of leftists in the Israeli intelligence services.   The simple fact of the matter is that Israel has stupendous capabilities in the technical side of intelligence collection, but this is often neutralized by the incredible stupidity at the top of the intelligence services.   All the technical information in the world is useless if the person interpreting it is an idiot with a political agenda to advance blindly.  (Those who think US intelligence is any better should read the works of Angelo Codevilla - http://www.amazon.com/Informing-Statecraft-Angelo-Codevilla/dp/0743244842 .) 

    Time after time the most senior intelligence officers come from the Israeli Left and so insist on forcing the information they are fed into the ideological mould and framework of the Left.   When Peres and Beilin began the Oslo debacle, not a single warning came out of the intelligence services that Arafat and the PLO were simply playing Israel, that they would use any plot of land over which they would be granted control for terrorist aggression against Israel.  Not a single intelligence warning came out that showed that the PLO's intentions were war, that the PLO would never recognize Israel or seek peace with Israel, that the PLO was still devoted to genocidal aggression against Jews.  The irony was that every commentator in Israel with eyes in his head and who did NOT have access to any special intelligence information understood perfectly well what the intelligence "experts" had blinded themselves from seeing.

    And so, more than two decades after the Oslo debacle began, the PLO leadership is still insisting that it will never recognize or accept Israel as a Jewish state (see http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/176177#.UtJSLPQW3-o), even while the Israeli politicians, the journalists, and the erstwhile intelligence chiefs lecture the country about how the PLO are true partners for making peace.  Abu Mazen gave a speech last week singing the praises of the suicide bombers.  The perpetual response of the Left is that the Arabs are being xenophobic and malevolent because the Jews have just not made ENOUGH concessions! 

     Nothing so perfectly illustrates the dominance of Leftist "thinking" over Israeli intelligence services than the horrific propaganda movie "The Gatekeepers."  (See http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12953#.UtJn5_QW3-o)  We have commented on this before and I will not belabor the discussion.  But the film is essentially a series of interviews with four past chiefs of Israeli intelligence.  All four are McClellanist defeatists.  All four are leftists and all four continue to promote the delusions of the Left and insist that Israel must continue down the Oslo road.  The producer of the film is an anti-Israel leftist Israeli who does not attempt to hide his contempt for his own country (see http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/260961#.UtJN4_QW3-o ).   One of the four "stars" of the film is Ami Ayalon.  He is the anti-democratic villain who just prevented Prof. Robert Aumann from receiving an honorary PhD at the University of Haifa because Aumann does not comply with the thought police that Ami Ayalon wants to control Israeli academia.   (Ayalon is chair of the steering committee of the University.)

      Watching the film and listening to the delusions and political biases of these intelligence officials teaches us everything we need to know about the failures of Israeli statecraft in the past two decades.

      One of the other "stars" of that propaganda film was Carmi Gillon.  Another past intelligence official, Gillon is most infamously remembered for having set up a partisan "Surveillance Team for Spying on Jews," for spying on "settlers" and "rightists" and other politically incorrect groups of Jews.  To harass and persecute them for partisan reasons. 

     All of which makes the story of Gillon פךשטןמע Hשצךקא שמג scrambling frantically to escape being arrested by Danish leftists all the more delicious.

     The anti-democratic Gillon was in Denmark to help promote the screening there of The Gatekeepers.  A local branch of the axis of evil, that which links leftists with jihadis, had filed a petition in Denmark to have Gillon apprehended and arrested there on charges of "torture."   Basically the groups of people who seek to have Israeli military personnel and politicians arrested in Europe are inspired and mentored by the very same Israeli leftists that Gillon and his Gatekeeper comrades serve.  Anti-Israel leftist propaganda by Israelis leads directly to lawfare assaults by jihadis, leftists and Hitlerjugend groups in Europe seeking to harass and arrest Israelis. 

    Gillon had to scramble to get out of Denmark a few steps ahead of the arrest warrant.   Pseudo-Hamlet style, he then growled about how baseless the charges against him were, this coming from the very same person who has spent so much of his career promoting baseless charges against Israel and against Israeli non-leftists.   The story about Gillon's adventures in Denmark is here http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.568063 and http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/176170#.UtJrL_QW3-o .

   So it really is not much of an exaggeration to claim that the real cause of the attempt to have Gillon arrested was the very same propaganda film that he and Ami Ayalon and the rest of the Shin Bet Left produced.   I personally would like to call on Denmark to issue a similar arrest warrant for Ami Ayalon.  If you Danes send the Interpol to the University of Haifa to come pick him up, you are all welcome to use my own office for free as your logistics operations base.  I will move some of the posters of Naomi Chazan with the rhino horn on her nose out of the way so you will all have enough room.

      [And while I obviously think that Carmi Gillon is an incompetent anti-democratic buffoon, let me make it clear that this is NOT the same thing as endorsing any of the infantile "theories" of Barry Chamish about how Gillon was somehow responsible for the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.  As usual, Chamish "theories" about everything are deranged idiocy.  Chamish's latest cause, by the way, is to recruit his few remaining followers into helping him fight off a conspiracy by the Council on Foreign Relations to place noisy toddlers in the apartment unit above his in Florida, where Chamish is living off welfare and where, according to his latest "publication," the toddler noise is interfering with his invention of conspiracy fiction.]

2.    One of the problems in Israel is that the media, most of which are dominated by leftists, rarely conduct public opinion polls in which the truly relevant questions are asked.  Until now, I have not seen any serious poll about what Israelis want to do with the tens of thousands of African illegal infiltrators in the country.   Leftists in the media prefer to lecture the Israelis about how "Jewish ethics" require that Israel grant unlimited refuge and "rights" to the Africans, just as long as none of them are housed in the buildings where the Leftists live.  This coming from the very same secularist leftists who have never studied or observed Judaism and have no idea whatsoever what Jewish ethics really are.

    Anyway, the conservative Makor Rishon newspaper conducted a poll last week about the African invaders and its results appeared on Friday.  The vast majority of Israelis believe the government exhibited gross incompetence in everything related to the invaders.  In terms of dealing with the invaders, 51% of Israelis want all of the Africans to be evicted immediately.  Another 43% want most of them evicted but are willing for some to be granted special residence visas in exceptional circumstances, such as those facing persecution in their home countries.  Only 2% want the invaders to be generally allowed to remain in Israel.  These are the 2% who have been influenced by the New Israel Fund rallies and media events in which leftists prepare placards and speeches for the Africans so they can pretend to be persecuted refugees.  The latest rallies by the invaders are where the Left has them cued to scream about their "rights."  Just what "rights" do illegal African invaders have in Israel?  Other than the right to a one-way ticket on a steamship from Eilat to Africa?  (I personally would make them pay for those tickets as well!)   I guess I would be willing to pay for their plane tickets to Denmark though.

    In the same poll, Israelis (including Israeli Arabs) were asked if they think the Kerry "negotiations" will produce any results, and 80% said no.  9% said yes, with the rest having no response or saying don't know.  9% is half the proportion of Arabs in the population.    Israelis were asked what they would say if Kerry produced a "deal" under which the Arabs recognized Israel as a Jewish state and where a Palestinian state was formed in the West Bank with minor exchanges of territory and where the settlement concentrations remain part of Israel.  Fully 53% say they would OPPOSE such a deal, even if it were to be offered.   34% said they would support the deal, except that the "Palestinians" repeat three times a day that they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state (see above quote by reptilian Ashrawi) and so the 34% are endorsing a completely imaginary and utopian "deal" that will not be on the table.

      More specifically, since Kerry has been drumming on the need for Israel to abandon the Jordan Valley and turn it over to the savages in a "peace deal," fully 73% of Israelis say they would OPPOSE Israel giving up the Jordan Valley even if it were part of an overall peace accord.  20% say they would endorse it.   I presume these are the Arabs in the survey saying so.