Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Reprint from 2003 - when the Hebrew University went Deconstructively Bonkers
| Deconstructing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Steven Plaut 24 June 2003 This past week the Hebrew University of Jerusalem decided to grant an honorary PhD to Jacques Derrida, the godfather of the pseudo-philosophy of "Deconstructionism." | |
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem decided to make itself into an even bigger laughingstock than it already has been thanks to its legions of Far Leftist and Anti-Zionist professors. This past week it decided to grant an honorary PhD to Jacques Derrida, the godfather of the pseudo-philosophy of "Deconstructionism." | |
Saturday, October 25, 2014
How Terrorism Was Successfully Defeated
By: Steven Plaut / JewishPress.com
Thursday, June 28, 2007
After their military defeat by regular forces, the occupied population produced terrorists who engaged in bombings, sniping, poisonings, and other attacks on occupation forces and on the civilian population. They operated as irregulars in small terror units, armed with automatic weapons and bazookas.
Women and minors as young as eight participated in the terror attacks. They attempted to build weapons of mass destruction, using chemical poisons. They assassinated officials of the occupation regime. They had a special obsession with torturing and murdering "collaborators." They murdered hundreds of civilians, while thousands of the terrorists themselves were killed by the occupation armed forces. The occupiers responded to terror with brutality and force, sometimes using collective punishment.
The above does not refer to or describe the anti-American and anti-British terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor does it describe Palestinian terrorism against Israel launched from the West Bank and Gaza.
What it does refer to is the campaign of terrorism directed against Allied forces in Europe in the aftermath of the defeat of Nazi Germany. The terrorists were members of a number of underground "resistance" organizations attempting to punish the Allied "occupiers" and drive them out. The most important of the terror groups was known as Werwolf (German for werewolf).
Until recently, relatively little was known about groups like Werwolf. But several books, particularly those authored by Perry Biddiscombe, a professor of history at the University of British Columbia, have shed light on the activities of the groups and on the anti-terror strategies that ultimately defeated them.
Most of what follows is based on the research of Biddiscombe. There are valuable lessons to be learned from the campaign against the Werwolf, both for the U.S.-led coalition fighting in Iraq and for Israel in its battles against Arab terrorism.
For many years now the conventional wisdom has been that terrorism cannot be defeated militarily, that it can only be stopped when its underlying grievances are redressed and appeased. Moreover, the entire strategy of dealing with terrorism militarily has long been under assault by the Western chattering classes as ineffective and unjust.
Anti-terror tactics used by the contemporary Allies in Iraq and Afghanistan or by Israel against its enemies have been denounced by the media and by countless public figures, especially in Western Europe. But the claim that terrorism and guerilla warfare cannot be defeated militarily is false, as illustrated by the campaign against the Werwolf.
Origins and Tactics
Nazi preparations for a campaign of terrorism against the invading Allies were underway by 1943. At first the intention was for irregular fighters to serve as a diversionary force operating behind enemy lines. The name "Werwolf" (also spelled "Wehrwolf") was chosen from a book by Hermann Lons (Der Wehrwolf) glamorizing a 17th century German guerilla fighter.
The Werwolf developed into a large full-fledged terrorist organization, operating under the command of the SS. It operated in "groups" consisting of 4 to 6 fighters, with 6 to 10 groups forming a "sector" and 6 to 8 sectors forming a "section." At its height, the Werwolf organization probably had about 6,000 fighters, though it could call on the support and cooperation of other units such as the Volksturm, a militia of the elderly and very young set up by Hitler near the end of the war. Himmler took personal control of operations starting in 1944.
The technology of those terrorists was of course far more primitive than that used by modern Middle East terrorists, but some of the similarities in technique are striking. Beheadings were a common Werwolf tactic. Decades before the pilfering of the museums of Baghdad, the Werwolf were under orders to sabotage and destroy art galleries, museums and other cultural institutions. While Germany never produced a campaign of suicide bombers, Werwolf terrorists were equipped with cyanide tablets and expected to commit suicide rather than be taken captive.
In the campaign against the Werwolf, an estimated 3,000-5,500 terrorists were killed. Werwolf terrorism continued well after formal hostilities ended and Germany had surrendered. In the German area of Italy, South Tyrol, where a German separatist movement was active, sabotage, bombings and Werwolf guerilla violence continued into the 1960's.
As part of the campaign of terrorism, German Red Cross ambulances routinely carried arms and munitions, long before the Palestinians perfected that technique. Buildings thought to be designated for use as Allied barracks were mined, especially in Lorraine (where the attacks were directed against the U.S. Third Army). Werwolf terrorists collected caches of poison gases and chemical weapons, most of which were discovered by Allied forces before they could be used.
The Werwolf used death squads and assassination hit teams, often against German civilians whom the terrorists suspected of collaboration or defeatism. Civil authorities in German towns under Allied occupation were favorite targets. Priests, public officials, and even German villagers flying white surrender flags were attacked.
Werwolf terrorists were each typically equipped with 15-20 pounds of explosives and small arms, often including bazookas. Generally they operated stealthily without uniform, in civilian clothes. They set up caches of armaments in farms, caves, forests, and abandoned mines. Interestingly, there was a female contingent of terrorists, a unit of which, equipped with bazookas, played an important role in the last weeks of fighting around Berlin.
Children were also frequently used in terror attacks. The Hitlerjugend, or Hitler Youth, was one of the main sources of recruits for the Werwolf. Entire units of Werwolf consisted of minors. Teenage Werwolf terrorists were involved in bombing the Red Army barracks near Hindenberg. Child snipers shot and threw grenades at advancing American forces. Himmler himself invented an incentive system for Hitler Youth serving in the Werwolf: 100 cigarettes for ten sniper kills; 20 days' leave for twenty kills; a watch and Iron Cross for fifty kills.
A unit of 14-year-olds attacked U.S. forces near Nuremberg. "Operation Nursery," a campaign against Werwolf terrorism by minors, was mounted by U.S. and British troops and continued well into 1946.
The terrorists used a variety of techniques. In addition to sniping and bombings, decapitation wires were popular – thin piano wire stretched across a road just at the height of the necks of drivers of Allied vehicles or motorcycles. Allied forces sometimes retaliated against such attacks by beheading captured terrorists. In Schleswig-Holstein, the British lopped off the heads of a dozen terrorists.
Mass poisoning was another favorite terrorist method. It was used with horrific success especially, but not exclusively, against Red Army troops. Between February and July 1945, 180 American troops were murdered with poisoned liquor. The Werwolf would spike liquor and food with odorless poison and wait for the troops to indulge. A special entity called the KTI, or Criminal Technical Institute, would prepare the poisons.
While the armed conflict raged, Werwolf terrorists were active in capturing, torturing and murdering enemy troops. But as the war drew to a close, the Werwolf began to specialize in terrorizing German civilians suspected of collaborating with or failing to resist the Allies' advance.
Werwolf terrorism was strongest on the Eastern front, as Soviet forces threatened East Prussia, Silesia, and other areas regarded by Germans as part of their heartland. The Werwolf even ran its own radio station.
Ferocious Response
How were those terrorists eventually defeated? With brutal military force and counter-terrorism combined with a long-term program of denazification of German civilians.
The Soviets were by far the least squeamish of the Allies when it came to suppressing Werwolf terrorism. According to a Vatican report, "Russian reprisals…were terrible. Using flame-throwers the Russians destroyed entire blocks of houses causing the deaths of hundreds of the inhabitants."
Soviet troops dealt with the threat through mass executions, mass arrests, marauding, and arson directed against German civilians. Hostages were grabbed from areas where any Werwolf sabotage took place and often were summarily executed. Any Germans – even hunters – possessing any weapons were shot on the spot as terrorists. Any German witnessing terror attacks who did not come forward to testify about them was shot. Those hiding terrorists or weapons were shot and their homes burned to the ground.
As of October 1946, the Soviets were holding 3,336 Werwolf terrorists in prison within the Soviet zone. The Soviets also crowded 240,000 suspected Werwolf sympathizers into a prison camp (where fully a third simply perished). In Jarmin in Pomerania, when German terrorists killed two Soviet troops, the entire town was demolished. In Schivelbein, after a Soviet general was killed by a sniper, the Soviets murdered every man in town.
Soviet looting and marauding in occupied German areas continued unrestrained into 1947. While such behavior may strike us as barbarous retaliation, Biddiscombe describes it thus: "None the less, given what the Werwolf was doing, or trying to do, the responses of the occupiers do not lay beyond the realm of comprehension." The Soviets were still concerned about threats of Werwolf sabotage and terror in Eastern Europe during the 1950's.
The French were second to the Soviets in the viciousness and ferocity of their suppression of Werwolf terrorism. French soldiers pillaged German areas as they fell under their control. Random beatings of Germans by the French were common. The French forcibly expelled all German civilians from numerous towns and villages in their area of control. General Le Clerc issued an edict on November 25, 1944 to shoot five Germans for every act of sniping near Strasbourg.
Following some Werwolf activity around Constance, French forces grabbed 400 hostages and executed two. Any building in the French zone with Werwolf graffiti on it was immediately demolished. Owners had at most an hour to remove such graffiti once it appeared in order to avoid such a fate. Collective fines were imposed on German civilians for sabotage activities in their area. Wholesale travel and curfew restrictions were imposed on the entire German population.
While American troops generally avoided the excesses of the Soviets and French, they were sharply criticized by the British for using excessive brutality and force in suppressing the Werwolf. General Eisenhower ordered the execution of all Werwolf fighters captured in civilian garb.
It was understood among U.S. troops that they had a green light for applying frontier justice to terrorists, with no lawyers or trials. The counterinsurgency manual issued by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expedition Force (SHAEF) recommended that troops simply ignore Geneva Convention rules when dealing with the Werwolf.
SHAEF instructions allowed using captive Germans in forced labor; seizure of German civilians as hostages; collective punishment; shooting of hostages; and massive bombings of civilian areas containing terrorists. Threats to shoot all curfew violators were commonly made. At Lutzkampen, Allied troops threatened to burn down the village if there were any violations of curfew.
When U.S. troops were attacked at Aschaffenburg in Lower Franconia, the entire town was annihilated by Seventh Army artillery. In the fall of 1945, well after the surrender, U.S. forces still regarded Werwolf bands as "one of the biggest potential threats to security in both the American and Allied Zones of Occupation."
Around Stuttgart, members of Werwolf bazooka teams were shot on sight by American troops. Massive artillery bombardment of civilian areas with snipers was used whenever it was thought such action could prevent Allied troop casualties. In Krefeld, one of the first towns taken by the Americans, 120,000 civilians were rounded up and held in detention camps.
Other Allied forces were vicious in suppressing the Werwolf. The Czechoslovaks routinely tortured and abused captured terrorists. The most dramatic Czechoslovak actions took place in the Sudetenland. After some Czechs were murdered by the Werwolf, local authorities threatened to shoot all German refugees there who had arrived from Silesia.
In July 1945 a large explosion took place in Aussig an der Elbe, killing 50 people. Blaming local ethnic Germans, the authorities killed German civilians in reprisal. The remaining German population was expelled from the town. Slovaks and Poles often treated Germans little better.
Canadian forces were also brutal in suppressing terrorism. Canadian General Chris Vokes carried out large-scale destruction of German property in retaliation for guerilla activities. Towns from which sniper fire was directed against Canadian troops were reduced to rubble. Orders were given to demolish buildings housing snipers rather than risk the lives of troops. German homes were bulldozed. No "solidarity" protesters picketed the corporate headquarters of the companies manufacturing the bulldozers.
As is the case with the terrorism directed against U.S. troops in Iraq and against Jews in Israel, Werwolf terror was never in and of itself an existential threat, nor did it represent a serious military strategy capable of defeating regular armies. Rather, it was designed to demoralize – to defeat the enemy by generating growing casualties over long periods and trigger defeatism among the enemy's home population.
While no one in his or her right mind would advocate some of the more excessive means used to suppress the German terrorists of the late 1940's, that era nevertheless teaches us that a determined no-nonsense campaign of wiping out terrorism with armed force is capable of succeeding, even against the most brutal of opponents. Determined denazification of fanatic violent populations was also shown to work.
Such success is not easy, nor does it come cheaply.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Such an accident....
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
About the 23rd
1. About the 23rd
I have long had a bit if a pet peeve when it comes to the 23rd Psalm ("The Lord is my Shepherd…"). My beef is not with the words in the Psalm and certainly not with King David himself. Rather, I find it irritating how the 23rd Psalm has been converted into the "essence of the Bible" by popular culture. Nearly every single Hollywood film in which anyone reads any passage at all from the Bible, whether a soldier character or preachers or cowboys, will be reading the 23rd Psalm. In other media venues the Psalm is just as dominant. Many decades back in yesteryear, when I was a whippersnapper back in Philadelphia, and when it was still permitted (even mandatory) to read from the Bible each morning in public schools, it was almost always the 23rd Psalm. When American politicians want to show how interested they are in the Bible, they cite the 23rd. I find it repugnant.
It goes without saying that one cannot reduce the essence of the Bible to the 23rd. The Book of Psalms in its entirety is unrepresentative of the Bible in general. And within the set of Psalms, I do not see how anyone can even claim that the 23rd somehow "captures" the entire Book of Psalms, which is in fact highly heterogeneous.
The over-marketing of the 23rd is, in my mind, very poor taste. It has gotten to the point where I cringe a bit when hearing public readings of the 23rd in English, especially in films. The Hebrew version is sufficiently different so that I do not have the same gut response, for example when it is read in evening services on Shabbat and holidays. In Hebrew culture, it never became as over-marketed, saturated, and "commercialized" as in English.
Having aired my beef, let me also tell you about one of the loveliest renditions of the 23rd, one you really will want to hear. It is by the singer Uzi Hitman (pronounced Cheightman), who died in 2004. Hitman was a popular singer in Israel, known best for his children's songs and appearances on children's TV shows. He was a Tel Aviv secularist who hung with the local bohemians. He died at the age of 52 from a heart attack.
Despite being a secularist, Hitman had a long track record of writing music for, recording, and popularizing some religious songs. The popular tune for Adon Olam, which is today often sung in synagogues and on the pop radio, was written and performed by him. An album of his religious recordings was released after his death and has become quite popular (called Esa Einei). Some of its tracks are on youtube.
One in particular is worth emphasizing. It is this track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nm_O0RNrb8 . It begins with an old recording of a cantor singing for about 40 seconds and then it morphs into Hitman singing. The cantor is the Holocaust-survivor father of Hitman himself, and Uzi chose to record it in this interesting way. Based on an old Chassidic melody. After the first 40 seconds you will hear Hitman singing the 23rd. Take a minute and open the link. It will make your day!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nm_O0RNrb8
2. "The Birth of a Nation" is an old film that glorified the Ku Klux Klan and was boycotted by all right-thinking folk, including in the entertainment world.
'Based on two historical novels, The Clansman, An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905) and The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden, 18651900 (1902), and a play, The Clansman (1906), written by a North Carolina lawyer turned preacher, Thomas Dixon Jr., The Birth of a Nation recounts the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction through the eyes and experiences of Southern whites who vehemently opposed the political and social progress made by newly freed African Americans after the Civil War. Much of the novel's tone, which Cripps describes as "a nightmare of interracial brutality, rape and castigation," found its way into The Birth of a Nation.' (from http://chnm.gmu.edu/episodes/the-birth-of-a-nation-and-black-protest/)
So isn't it time that the Birth of a Nation be set to music and staged at the NY Met? Surely the Mayor of NY will want to attend!
3. The world media are having conniptions over a few Jewish families moving into SIlwan, the area of the ancient City of David near the Western Wall. Funny how it is never news or controversial when Arabs move into Jerusalem's Jewish neighborhoods. The anti-Israel Ku Klux Klansmen think Jews should be prevented from moving into neighborhoods "where they do not belong." Can cross burning by BBC and CNN and Peace Now be far behind?
4. The "Occupy" Terrorists: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/occupy-wall-streetferguson-thug-who-assaulted-jewish-man-at-anti-israel-protest-wont-be-charged-whate-crime/#.VEWo_L7uJJk.facebook
5. (from 2011) An Open Letter to an Israeli "Social Justice" Tent Protester
http://zioncon.blogspot.co.il/2011/07/open-letter-to-tent-protester.html
Sunday, October 19, 2014
When the Israeli government almost installed ISIS on the shores of the Sea of Galilee
1. When the Israeli government almost installed ISIS on the shore of the Kinneret
By Steven Plaut
It is truly maddening to consider how close Israel came to turning the Golan Heights over to Syria in the year 2000 and how close Israel came to having hordes of ISIS terrorists sitting smack on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, directly across from Tiberias.
In the year 2000 the Israeli Labor Party ruled the country and Ehud Barak was Prime Minister. Negotiations were being conducted about a complete and total Israeli "withdrawal" from the Golan Heights. The Syrian border would have moved to the shores of the Sea of Galilee and Syria would have been granted water rights to the Kinneret. This took place under the coaxing of Barak's party's "doves" and especially Itamar Rabinovich, a past president of Tel Aviv University, a relative of Yitzhak Rabin, and an ex-Ambassador to the US. Rabinovich saw himself as some sort of authority on Syria and led the Labor-Left's campaign to strike a deal-at-any-cost with Syria.
Israel in fact did offer Syria the entire Golan Heights, only to find that the Syrians were demanding MORE than that. In what can only have been a divinely decreed miracle, the deal did not go through. Like with Pharoah, the Assad dictator's heart was hardened mysteriously, and he failed to grab the prize when it was proffered. Here is the Le Monde report on what appeared in 2000 to be an imminent "peace agreement": http://mondediplo.com/2000/01/02gresh
In reality, of course, Assad was offered everything including the kitchen plate. Since then the Israeli Left has invented a new Pseudo-History of this episode, claiming Barak was in fact holding back and not making "enough" concessions to Assad. After all, Barak failed to offer Assad all of Rabinovich's Tel Aviv University.
To read the opinion pieces and speeches in Israel from the 1999-2000 era of negotiations with Assad is to enter the Twilight Zone. One after the other, these people hectored and browbeat the Israeli public about what a wonderful and unique historic opportunity this was. All Israel had to do was to surrender to all of Assad's demands. Moreover, time was of the essence. Every second that passed without a capitulation deal to Syria would see Israel's situation worsen and would produce existential dangers for Israel. Some of these pseudo-analyses and predictions were re-published over the past weekend by Haggai Segel in Makor Rishon, and reading them is truly eye-opening.
At the time I did my own small part to belay the catastrophe being planned by Rabinovich and Barak. I published this article in 1999 in the Middle East Quarterly: http://www.meforum.org/476/the-collapsing-syrian-economy , In it I argued that not only was time not pressing for a deal with Syria, but time was very much running AGAINST Syria, because the Syrian economy was deep in the depths of implosion. Hence Israel could only benefit from stalling any attempt at reaching a deal with Syria. Say what you wish about the myopia of economists, but THIS prediction turned out to be right smack dab on the money. Syria indeed collapsed, and not only economically. The article at the time gained enormous attention and excerpts ran in the Wall Street Journal.
When Assad hardened his Pharoah's heart and rescued Israel, the drama did not end. During the next decade or so, swarms of Israeli leftists from the Labor Party and elsewhere tried to reconstruct the "deal" that Ehud Barak almost signed, demanding that Israel enter negotiations with Syria from the last negotiation position by Barak. In other words, start with Barak's last offer of total capitulation as the starting point and then negotiate NEW additional concessions to Syria from there.
It should be noted, by the way, that at this point the Golan Heights have been part of the state of Israel for more than twice as long as they were ever part of the state of Syria before 1967.
If it had been all up to the Israeli Labor Party, ISIS terrorists would be today encamped on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and sending out murder parties each evening into the Galilee in rowboats and rafts. Israel was spared this fate not because of any serendipitous dose of common sense by its leaders, but thanks to the miracle of the Pharaoh-like hardening of the heart of the Assad beast.
2. Leftists hate Peace and Jews: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4581284,00.html
3. Obama says he is truly shocked that Joe Biden's soldier son was using drugs. Well: http://www.websophist.com/obama_smoking-weed1-300M.jpg
4. According to a survey of Jewish Israelis published in Israel Hayom today, Jewish Israelis oppose creation of any Palestinian by a huge majority of at least four to one. The minority 18.2% who support it probably do so subject to all sorts of restrictions and limitations (the exact wording of the question is not reported in the news story). Even larger amounts (6,5 to 1 opposed) oppose creation of a Palestinian state if it involves Israeli withdrawal from the Jordan Valley. SO what are we to make of all those blubberings by Shimon Peres and the Israeli Left that there is near-consensus in Israel in favor of creation of a Palestinian state? I suspect that the proportion of Israelis who support the death penalty for traitors is far far larger than the proportion of Israelis who endorse the so-called "Two State Solution."
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=20817
5. John Kerry thinks the Jews are to blame for the emergence of ISIS because Israel refuses to commit suicide in order to end the "Arab-Israeli Conflict." So just out of curiosity, who was it exactly who created the Viet Cong that Kerry used to support so enthusiastically?
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=13469
6. PPSSSSTTTTT! Pass it on! Obama will be setting up a new web site to fight Ebola!
7. Caroline Glick on why the "Palestinians" should never get a state: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/10/16/should-nations-recognize-a-palestinian-state/there-should-be-no-palestinian-state-23
Thursday, October 16, 2014
The Israeli Left's Petition Fascism
Recognizing a Terror State
Posted By Steven Plaut On October 16, 2014
So let us see if we have this straight. The British parliament decides to "recognize" the "state" of "Palestine." It thus reverts to exactly the same displays of courage and integrity that it showed back when Britain recognized the right to self-determination of the Sudeten Germans in 1938. All this from Britain, the occupier of Gibraltar, the Falklands, Wales, Scotland, Ulster, and the Channel Islands. The Brits are joined by Sweden in a similar belch of "recognition." You remember Sweden, the country that was too cowardly to choose a side in either World War and that provided iron ore to feed Hitler's war machine. Yes, Sweden, which refuses to recognize the rights to self-determination of its own Samis, and whose journalists recycle medieval blood libels about Jews murdering gentiles and selling their body parts. Other European countries are expected to follow. Why "Palestine" is any more worthy of being "recognized" than ISIS, another terrorist gang claiming to be a state seeking "recognition," is never explained.
Now an interesting twist to the story is the demonstration of the Israeli Radical Left of its contempt for democracy and for Israeli sovereignty. The Israeli Left, led by the tenured leftists, is willing to endorse pretty much anything that is harmful to its own country. It has been urging European countries to "recognize the state of Palestine." A petition was signed by dozens of Israel's most anti-Israel academics, plus some non-academic members of the Hamas Lobby. It was organized by Amiram Goldblum from the Hebrew University, a founder of the extremist anti-Israel "Peace Now" organization, and Alon Liel, an ex-diplomat who now teaches for some reason at Tel Aviv University. These two were earlier among the initiators and organizers of a notorious pseudo-poll that claimed falsely to show that Israeli Jews favor "apartheid." That "poll" last year was an exercise in distortion and tendentious manipulation, designed to generate misleading "statistics." It was thoroughly discredited by serious social scientists.
Now the same "Israel is an Apartheid Regime" propaganda team is back, rallying the rest of the anti-Israel academic Left to attempt to bypass and neutralize Israeli sovereignty. Their initiative also reflects the utter contempt and disdain that Leftists in Israel have for democracy.
No one is stopping the Radical Left in Israel from peddling its ideological wares in the marketplace of public opinion. In fact the Radical Left exercises unchallenged control over two of Israel's daily newspapers and also dominates all of the television and radio broadcasts. The problem is that it has been a dramatic failure. Its anti-Israel lobbying has fallen flat on its face. The public simply repudiates the Left's agenda. Treason just has not proved to be the grand vote grabber that the Left expected. Certainly since the outbreak of the recent battles in Gaza, almost no one in Israel still favors the so-called "Two State Solution." Almost no one is willing to see Israel "withdraw" from the West Bank and allow a Palestinian terror state to operate there. Almost no one is willing to reward Hamas with "concessions."
The Left understands that its "ideas" have been rejected by nearly the entire Israeli political spectrum. Since it is incapable of persuading Israelis of the correctness of its agenda, it has decided instead to recruit foreign powers to "do the job" for it and bully Israel. It demands that foreign countries and organizations hostile to Israel coerce the Jewish country into adopting the very political platform favored by the Left that is rejected by perhaps 97% of Israelis.
Goldblum, the organizer of the petition calling for European recognition of the "state of Palestine," has a long track record of calling for Europeans to suppress and override Israeli sovereignty and impose policies upon Israel from without opposed by the bulk of Israelis. In a notorious speech before an assembly of leftists in May 2012, Goldblum was quoted as calling upon Israel's Left to stop wasting its time attempting to persuade the general public to embrace its political agenda, evidently because it is clear that the public will never do so. Goldblum said he has no interest in the Israeli electorate and general public and called upon the radical Left to go directly to political groups abroad, outside of Israel, and recruit them as pressure groups to coerce Israel into accepting the agenda of the Israeli Left.
His comrades in Petitiongate are not very different. Among the signers calling on Europeans to "recognize Palestine" are Shlomo Sand, the pseudo-historian from Tel Aviv University who is the most openly anti-Semitic "academic" in Israel, Oren Yiftachel, who has built an "academic" career by asserting that Israel is an apartheid regime, plus a gaggle of card-carrying communists, tenured anti-Semites, and Hamas aficionados. The presence of such people on the faculties of Israeli universities tells you pretty much all you need to know about the state of academic standards here.
The only thing the signers of the petition detest more than their own country is freedom of speech. The Israeli far Left is a fascist movement that ferociously opposes not only Israeli sovereignty but also democracy and freedom of speech for non-leftists. Critics of leftists must be silenced and indicted, insist the Far Leftists, because the exercise of freedom of speech by non-leftists produces violence and it is a clear and present danger.
Meanwhile the number of Tenured Leftists openly calling for violence and murder grows. The leftist Attorney General never prosecutes such people for their calls to murder. They are just engaged in protected speech, you see, unlike Rabbis who write controversial books or Non-Leftist protesters expressing their opinions boisterously. Many of the tenured extremists seek to suppress academic freedom for Non-Leftists, especially for critics of the Left, and also freedom of speech. Goldblum, the initiator of the petition for "recognition of the State of Palestine," has a long track record of filing anti-democratic harassment SLAPP suits against those who disagree with his extremist opinions. Ben Dror Yemini, a Dean of Israeli journalism, has denounced Goldblum as an anti-democratic fanatic.
The Israeli signers of the petition calling upon European countries and others to negate Israeli sovereignty and to "recognize" the "state" of "Palestine" not only hate their own country, but they also hate basic democracy and human freedoms. "Peace Now," whose name in Hebrew is Shalom Achshav, should change its name to SHISIS = Subverters and Harassers of Israel and of Israelis. It may yet merge with ISIS. Its head should be renamed the Grand Israeli Scheisskopf.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Puddingate
Puddingate
By Steven Plaut
The past few weeks the media in Israel has been all obsessed with reports that some Israelis are emigrating to Berlin. Small numbers of Israelis have always emigrated to other countries. In fact, the numbers were far larger in the 1950s and 1960s (when almost all emigrants were also recent immigrants to Israel). The fact that some Israelis choose to go to Berlin is a bit disgusting, given Jewish racial memories, but not really all that newsworthy. The media have attempted to connect the "out-migration to Berlin" with the cost of living in Israel. If I had a shekel for every newspaper and radio report that says that these people are moving to Berlin because the cost of chocolate pudding is lower there, I could buy Teva. Why the journalists are so obsessed with chocolate pudding is not really clear. I propose it be called Puddingate.
One wag commented that it is not just chocolate pudding that is cheaper in Berlin. In Israel one has to pay good money to get a tattoo on one's forearm, whereas in Berlin they are willing to give Jews a tattoo like that for free. Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew, at least has challenged the pudding obsession. It has repeatedly insisted that Israeli emigrants are going to Berlin because they are so disgusted with the ideology of the ruling Israeli Right.
Ironically, the truth about the pudding emigration came out today in the same Haaretz. To explain this, it needs to be pointed out that Haaretz is really a mix of two different newspapers. There is the regular daily dose of treason, contained in the main section of the newspaper and in all of the Op-Ed and "analytic" pieces, poorly disguised even as it infiltrates into almost all the news stories. But then there is a second Haaretz, which is the "Marker" business supplement. The Marker is run by a completely separate team. While as anti-Likud as the main newspaper moghuls, the "Marker" is not only the best business daily in Israel by far, it also tends to be the only voice of free market economic policy in Israel. Go figure. The main Haaretz is basically a communist front rag, but its business supplement is free market, anti-Histadrut, and proud of it! My guess is that two thirds of Haaretz subscribers buy it because of the Marker.
The Marker today fills in the missing facts about the hysteria over pudding emigration to Berlin. As it turns out, emigration these days from Israel is actually at an all-time low (in fact, the lowest since the 1970s), and far lower than immigration to Israel from Europe and the rest of the world. Emigration from Israel is also remarkably SMALL when compared to that from other OECD countries. Switzerland, by comparison, suffers from a gargantuan plague of emigrants running to escape their country. And the main reason for the remarkably LOW rate of out-migration from Israel is the high and rising standard of living in Israel and the low level of unemployment. It is estimated that there are a total of 3,065 people living in Berlin with Israeli citizenship, probably most of them Israelis who had grown up in Germany or Russian Jews who did not find their place in Israeli society and chose to move to Berlin.
Poor Haaretz! How is it going to sell its snake oil about emigration being a vote of no confidence in the Israeli Right when the data about emigration come from the very pages of Haaretz itself!?!
Monday, October 13, 2014
Conspiracist Lunacy at Haaretz
One of the stranger trends is the obsession with conspiracism on the part of the Radical Left and the Neo-Nazi Right. Strangely, they tend to feed off of one another and reinforce one another. The silliest inventor of conspiracy fiction regarding the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin is the perpetually unemployed UFO chaser Barry Chamish, who publishes his "theories" on the web sites run by Holocaust Deniers. Many of his "theories" get picked up by the Ultra-Left, such as an old Chamish fiction about how supposedly the Zionists irradiated Mizrachi children for ringworm (seehttp://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2007/03/ringworm_hoax.html ).
Now Amira Hass, the pro-terror Tokyo Rose from Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew, joins the feeding frenzy. In her column yesterday in Haaretz, she grants credence to the conspiracist "theories" about supposed cases of "kidnapped" Yemenite children. This is an old urban legend in Israel that has long been completely discredited. The conspiracy nuts claim that Yemenite Jewish children were "kidnapped" from their parents in the 1950s and handed over to Ashkenazi parents illegally for adoption.
In the same column in Haaretz she invents her own new Chamashite fiction, where she claims that during Israel's War of Independence Israel built "concentration camps" for "Palestinians." What she seems to be talking about were some prisoner-of-war camps designed to hold 5000 enemy prisoners during the war. Hass would like us to believe that the operation of such detention camps for enemy fighters was nothing short of Auschwitz. And she immediately compares it to the massive conspiracy to abduct Yemenite babies.
Amiram Goldblum (Hebrew University) and Alon Liel (Tel Aviv University) Spurring the British Parliament to Recognize an Arab State of Palestine
Goldblum authors a desperate plea, to which Liel also gives his name, for other Israeli ultra-leftists to join their anti-democratic measure to circumvent peace negotiations and create a belligerent Arab state in the Israeli heartland as a reward for terror.
"We, Israelis who worry and care for the well-being of the state of Israel, believe that the long-term existence and security of Israel depends on the long-term existence and security of a Palestinian state. For this reason we the undersigned urge members of the UK parliament to vote in favour of the motion to be debated on Monday 13th October 2014 calling on the British Government to recognize the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel"
Ben-Dror Yemini
She's Israeli. She's Jewish. She'd really like to write "love 'em!" about the Jihad's beheaders; but "in the storm of the present, it could be construed as cause for arrest."
It certainly is an exasperating present, in which a fascist majority isn't very enamored with the beheaders. And it's getting worse. Islamic State's public defender views the beheadings as a "refreshing form of dialogue," and she'd "really love to make kale for them." Her name is Anat Rimon-Or – a lecturer and teacher. She teaches at colleges. She taught at Beit Berl and also at high schools.
Along the spectrum of opinions in Israeli society, there are ones like these too. Clearly it was going to take a little while before members of the post-colonial cult began to offer up justifications for Islamic State too. It's not very complicated. You copy the standard blah-blah against colonialism – West, Zionism, white man, America, Europe – and the dish is ready. Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have already made pilgrimages to Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah. They are, after all, united in the struggle against Israel; thus the road linking madness on the left and the Jihadi madness was paved a long time ago.
Israel is a democracy. If someone were to claim that this madness is poisoning students, the outcry in support of freedom of speech would shift into high gear. She knows she can do it. After all, any form of criticism of this madness is viewed here as McCarthyism. So what's left to do? We need to make it clear to her students and pupils that a degree of caution is required when listening to her.
To get to the crux of the matter in just a few words: Rimon-Or bases her support for the Islamic State murderers on the claim that they are only responding to the misdeeds of the Americans, who are killing a lot more people with their tools of destruction – and "the more primitive and vulgar means" of the Jihad are nothing compared to that.
Before any of her students adopt this pseudo-sophisticated nonsense, one should remind them that the thousands who are being murdered in the name of Jihad in general, and the Islamic States' victims in particular, are in fact Muslims and Arabs. Only a handful are Westerners. But that's enough for her. Because the postcolonial school of thought is essentially racist.
It absolves "the others" of any responsibility. It rants and raves about the fact that two or three Westerners have been murdered. It turns the Jihad into an entity concerned with protest or the righting of social wrongs. It disregards the mass-murder festival. It ignores the fact that girls and women are being turned into sex slaves.
Whether any of that is of interest to her is doubtful. Rimon-Or, like many of her fellow followers of the same school of thought, is stuck like a scratched record in an anti-colonial model that has long since lost touch with reality. And the truth of the matter is that all the Jihad offshoots, from Boko Haram and through to the Taliban, operate with the same degree of barbarity, with or without Americans or Zionists in the vicinity. The Jihad groups perpetrate massacres against blacks and Muslims after all.
But let's not confuse the followers of this post-colonial school of thought with facts. The fact that the new mass murderers have also beheaded three Westerners is enough to get them to dive in with their theories.
Among other things, Rimon-Or has written a tiresome article under the title, "The Nazi Evil and the State of Israel," which, much to her chagrin, all the newspaper editors refused to publish. But fret not. Islamic State's anti-colonial newspaper will be happy to run it.
How did such a radical phenomenon emerge from within the Israeli academe? Well, it turns out that her doctoral advisor was Adi Ophir, a veteran member of the anti-Zionist school of thought.....
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
The Two Biggest Mysteries of Israeli History
1. Candidate for the Stupidest Academic of the Year:
Yonatan Mendel, from the Department of Politics (as in Neve Gordon) from Ben Gurion "University" for his quote in Haaretz today:
'If the status quo continues, then "peace in exchange for peace" - the current Israeli slogan - is a falsehood. First and foremost because it ignores the fact that even when things are quiet in Israel, in Gaza the frustration builds, and secondly because it hides from Israelis the fact that as long as Gaza despair is not replaced with hope there can never be peace.'
(Since the hope of the Gazans is to ship all the Jews off to death camps, Mendel does not want them to suffer from their hope being frustrated!)
2, The following are the two most mysterious unanswered questions from Israeli history:
1. How could it be that, after the fiasco of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Israeli Labor Party did not instantly disintegrate and disappear altogether and permanently from the political map of the country?
2. How could it be that, after the fiasco of the Oslo "Accords" in 1994, the Israeli Labor Party did not instantly disintegrate and disappear altogether and permanently from the political map of the country?
3. After its success in launching thousands of rockets at the Jews from Gaza, "Peace Now" has plans for yet another success in its battle against the existence of Israel:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/185846
The heads of Peace Now have recently declared that "Withdrawal is still a good idea." Kind of a shame that their fathers did not think the same thing....
A play on words in Hebrew. The "Peace Now" organization is called "Shalom Achshav" in Hebrew, adapted to: "Shalom Ach-Shav – "Futile Peace"
4. Ah yes, Sweden, the country that was too cowardly to pick a side in either World War. The country that shipped iron ore to Hitler to build his tanks.
Friday, October 03, 2014
Renaming the "Two State Solution"
1. The Labor Party in Israel plus the Livni Gang plus Meretz argue that, sure, the Gaza "withdrawal" produced war, terror, rockets and Hamastan, but that is because it was implemented without any signed "agreement" with the "Palestinians." If THEY were to be in charge, they would "withdraw" from the West Bank as part of a signed agreement and that of course would make all the difference.
So I have a question for them. What exactly is the difference between a terrorist who beheads you and a terrorist who signs a formal treaty and agreement swearing never to behead you but then beheads you? Please explain.
2. This is quite a remarkable article about Jewish leftist anti-Semitism, and it is even more remarkable that it ran in Haaretz. Worth reading:
3.
Let's rename the so-called "Two State Solution" as "The Proposal to Convert the West Bank into a New Terrorist Rocket Launching Base in order to allow Peace Now and Meretz to feel Righteous about themselves."From Haaretz' edition for Yom Kippur:
Just in time for Yom Kippur, Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew, today runs an Op-Ed by Yonatan Geffen, the aging hippy and nephew of Moshe Dayan, in which he proclaims:
"Netanyahu rejects the accusations that Israel carried out genocide because Israel did not finish murdering the entire Palestinian people. There are still some residuals of that people that can still be murdered in the next round..... Netanyahu is not only proud of the fact that the most moral of armies did not carry out genocide but even warned the Palestinian nation that it was about to be murdered by that army."
Thursday, October 02, 2014
Israeli Court-Ordered Dating Services and Day Camps for African Infiltrators
Court-Ordered Dating Services and Day Camps for African Infiltrators
The Op-Ed article in Yediot Ahronot October 2, 2015 today is particularly noteworthy because it is written by Amnon Abramovitch. He is a hardcore leftist and ordinarily one of the most radical commentators in the newspaper and on Channel Two News. During the recent Gaza war demonstrators held a noisy protest against him in front of his home. But the fact that he wrote this Op-Ed shows you how deep is the rage and resentment against the Israeli Supreme Court for its recent outrageous and unconstitutional decision to order the Israeli government to release all illegal infiltrators from Africa from detention. It extends into the Radical Left.
The Supreme Court's decision may be among the most unpopular in its long history of judicial activism and anti-democratic arrogance. There is no basis whatsoever for unelected judges to overturn the will of the elected representatives of the people with regard to anti-infiltrator policy. The reason why the massive tsunami of illegal infiltrators dried up in recent months has been because the Africans know that, if they sneak into Israel, they will be placed in detention centers and prevented from working (or stealing) to obtain funds to send to their families. Because of the slowness and the weakness of the government in responding to the problem, large swaths of southern Tel Aviv have been converted into a large Third World African miasma.
The presence of the infiltrators and the crime and disease they bring with them triggered massive outrage among Israelis. The government finally woke up and passed the law allowing the holding of the illegals in detention centers until they are deported. Not a single country in Africa, by the way, allows massive immigration of these same Eritreans and Sudanese.
But Israel's imperious court is composed of judges who do not live in the neighborhoods filled with the Africans. Ignoring Israeli law and common sense, ignoring the will of the people, the imperious judges simply ruled, with no legal basis, that the law passed by the parliament is illegal. By "illegal" the leftist judges mean that they personally disagree with it. But no one elected THEM to make laws. The Chief Justice of the Court himself denounced the ruling as misguided and arrogant.
In his column columnist Abramovitch rakes the judges over the coals and rips the masks of judicial seriousness off their faces. He cites in particular the bases for the ruling as written for the majority by Judge Uzi Fogelman. There Fogelman rationalizes the verdict by claiming that if the illegal African infiltrators are held in detention centers: "Then how will the infiltrators be able to fill their lives with meaning? How will they find partners to form couples? What sort of hobbies will they be able to pursue?"
No, it is not a Purim gag. This judge believes that these considerations, dating and hobbies for Africans, trump the right of Israelis to rid themselves of the illegals. As Abramovitch says, the judge thinks Israel should be a large dating service, a sort of African version of J-Date. He says he reread Israel's Declaration of Independence and found nothing there about Israel's obligation to provide African criminals with vacation packages and day camps. But the Court insists that the human rights of Israelis must be subordinate to the right of Africans to have day camps.
