Sunday, August 31, 2014
The "Rabbi" and the Wizz
1. Try to imagine how you would react if you saw a "scoop" on the web site run by white supremacists in Alabama claiming that the Ku Klux Klan was in fact being secretly run and commanded by Rev Al Sharpton or Barack Obama's daughter. Would you laugh yourself silly?
Well a claim a hundred times sillier is currently making the rounds on all the Bash-Israel web sites, claiming that ISIS is in fact run by the Israeli Mossad. The anti-Semites even claim to know the name of the Israeli agent running ISIS.
The fabrication seems to have been invented by the web site of a Neo-Nazi organization calling itself "Veterans Today." The "scoop" appears here: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/08/04/french-report-isil-leader-mossad/. It goes without saying that these people are not veterans at all. This is a conspiracist group that finds Zionist agents under every bed and inside every coca cola machine. It is wackier than the 9-11 Troofer kooks. The group has long been listed by the Anti-Defamation League as a Neo-Nazi group (see http://blog.adl.org/tags/veterans-today).
"Veterans Today" insists the Jews themselves planned the Holocaust and are currently incubating a new Hitler inside America. It has also long tried to capitalize on the old story of the accidental Israeli firing on the USS Liberty navy ship in the middle of the Six Day War (see http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/06/07/alan-hart-israels-attack-on-the-uss-liberty-the-full-story/ ). Indeed, that seems to be the origin of the group's name. They pretend to be navy vets who had been on that ship. As Neo-Nazis they have no problems with any of the countless Muslim attacks on the US over the past 60 years, and the only "attack" on the US military that interests them is that incident with the USS Liberty. (The truth about the Liberty incident can be read here: http://archive.adl.org/israel/uss.html#.VALtzDKSzK0 and http://inyourface.info/ArT/Alpha/UsL.shtml ). The Liberty incident remains the favorite bugaboo of the Neo-Nazis and their jihadi allies.
The Neo-Nazis are claiming that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a head of ISIS, is in fact a Mossad agent named Elliot Shimon. There actually is an Elliot Shimon, but he teaches English lit at my university (Haifa). Meanwhile, you will find the accusation that the Mossad set up and is running ISIS on every anti-Semitic Bash-Israel and pro-Jihad web site.
2. Geezers my age may recall a popular book from the 60s titled "Black Like Me," about a white journalist who posed as a black man in the South and wrote about his experiences. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me ). Well, one of the more amusing developments in recent Israeli history consists of a somewhat similar book, titled "Catch the Jew," written by journalist and play writer Tuvia Tenenbom. He is well known as the founder of the Jewish Theater in New York (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvia_Tenenbom).
In his new book, the multi-lingual Tenenbom toured the West Bank while passing himself off as a German investigative reporter. He spent time with the various leftwing Israeli and foreign agitators in the West Bank and asked them to educate him about the plight of the "Palestinians." He turned the results into a book. It is hilarious and at the same time highly revealing of the sorts of propagandists operating to undermine Israel and provide disinformation to the media. A chapter of his new book is reprinted in this past weekend's Makor Rishon.
Much of the chapter deals with Tenenbom's meetings and travels about the West Bank with "Rabbi" Arik Ascherman, head of the misnamed "Rabbis for Human Rights," a far-leftist anti-Israel propaganda NGO. Ascherman has "ordination" from the Reform synagogue "seminary" in Cincinnati and his wife also claims to be "ordained." In other words, both are Rabbis in the same sense as I am a ballet dancer.
While I have attacked Ascherman as a self-hating Jewish anti-Semite for years, the portrait of him in Tenenbom's chapter is far more demolishing. Mockery remains the most powerful weapon against such critters. Tenenbom meets Ascherman while the latter is wearing a "We are All Al-Arakiv" tee shirt, that being the name of some West Bank terrorist village. Noting that Ascherman is awash in funding from overseas haters of Israel, Tenebom describes how Ascherman "delivers the goods" to his patrons.
Ascherman first takes the "German journalist" to an olive orchard where he is lectured about how the "settlers" come and sabotage it and how Ascherman's team defends the trees from them. Tenenbom's guide is a Kenyan who came to the West Bank to make the world peaceful and it is a few days after the massacre of Kenyans in Nairobi by Islamists. Tenenbom asks the guide why he is here and not in Kenya trying to make world peace. He evades answering.
When they get to the orchard a Palestinian claiming his name is Bruce Lee tells the "German" about how settlers shot him last year. Bruce Lee says the "settlers" murder Palestinians all the time. How many have been so murdered?, asks the "German." Ascherman's host intervenes and tells him you will have to look it up on Google. The "German" persists and Bruce Lee says two. When? In 1999 and 2000. Bruce Lee goes on and tells the "German" that a few days ago, an Arab was praying in the field and a "settler" rode up on his horse, dismounted, told the Arabs to stop praying, and then shot him. From this we learn there are actually settlers who ride horses, says the "German" sarcastically. Did you actually see that, Bruce Lee is asked? No, my neighbor told me about it.
When no murderous settlers show up to bother the olive pickers, Ascherman offers to send a car that will take the "German" to see the horrific destruction perpetrated by settlers elsewhere. The driver arrives, a Palestinian Arab named Zakaria. They take him to a village where the German is told that every day or two the army comes and burns homes for no reason. The German asks to see some burnt homes. They cannot point him to any. They offer to show him photos of the army burning houses on a cell phone. When the German asks to see the phone photos, it turns out that they mysteriously disappeared, almost like IRS records.
Suddenly an Israeli army jeep appears. Watch this, say the hosts, the kids in the village will throw rocks at the jeep and then the soldiers will open fire at them. So they follow the jeep a bit. At one point the jeep pulls over to the side. Aha, say the hosts, these soldiers are about to set up a security checkpoint to harass Palestinians.
The German watches and one of the soldiers gets out of the jeep and takes a wizz into the bush on the side of the road.
Ah, these soldiers must be the "Number One" problem in the West Bank, but fortunately they did not turn out to be the "Number Two" problem.