Zionist Conspiracy

Shanda!! The Growing Disgrace at Ben Gurion University

2012-01-30T22:49:00.001-08:00

Shut it Down, Don't Try to Make it "Balanced"!!

By Professor Israel David, Ben Gurion University
Ope-ed in Maariv, January 30, 2012
(translated by Steven Plaut, Isracampus)

Complete closing down of the Department of Politics and Government at
Ben Gurion University is Now Essential

Ben Gurion University has found itself at a fork in the road, where
it is being required to provide clear and non-evasive answers to
Israel's Council on Higher Education, the public body that oversees
higher education in Israel. As the reader no doubt recalls, this
Council earlier appointed an international panel of professional
evaluation for the department of politics at BGU, and that panel
recommended shutting down the department of politics altogether,
unless the severe academic and professional shoddiness and
incompetence there would be cured. Numerous academics publicly
endorsed the panel's criticisms and recommendations. There was some
dissent however regarding the panel's sharp criticism of the BGU
department of politics for its absence of any balance or pluralism.
Complaints about the absence of balance have been voiced by many,
including the "Im Tirtzu" Zionist student movement. Even the
President of Ben Gurion University, Prof. Rivka Carmi, published her
own announcement in the media with reference to the recent politics
departmental "conference," in which she expressed disappointment at
the lack of balance and pluralism there.

Anyone with any sense of how academia works will understand at once
that the members of the panel were trying to avoid explicitly
addressing the heart of the problems here, and preferred to prettify
them by attributing them to the absence of "balance." Let us say
upfront that there is no real basis for mandating that "balance" be
maintained at academic conferences. A conference of physicists
describing the roundness of the earth need not grant equal time to
those insisting the earth is flat. So just what sort of "balance" is
deemed desirable and who should establish the rules for it?

There are indeed quite a few "imbalances" at Ben Gurion
University. Take for example the fact that nine out of the eleven
tenured faculty members in the department of politics at BGU, as well
as a great many of the non-tenured faculty members there, are radical
extremist seditious far-leftist activists. (Actually, all 11 are –
Isracampus) The chance that such a department could have emerged by
chance is far lower than the chance of winning millions in the
lottery. It should be noted that no similar "coincidence" can be
found at any other university! Therefore there can be no doubt that
this department was constructed intentionally using the "One friend
brings in another friend" method of nepotism, and that in turn is the
source of the absence of professional and scientific standards in the
department. When the international panel complained about the absence
of core subjects in the curriculum and research of the department of
politics, the department members themselves not only conceded that the
point was correct but expressed pride in it! The result is that the
Arab-Israeli conflict (or the leftist anti-Israel take on it) occupies
over 90% of the focus of attention in the department of politics at
BGU. At no university in the world would you find a situation where
90% of the faculty in physics are all dealing with a single sub-topic
within the discipline. There are oodles of topics in physics
deserving of attention. Nor would a basic physics course consist only
of citations of a single scientist because the instructor happened to
have studied that scientist, even if that scientist were Einstein.

The imbalance of interest when it comes to the department of
politics is the imbalance of purpose. The bulk of faculty members in
the department have no idea what the mission of an academic
institution is. The current chairman of the department, Dr. Dani
Filc, responded to the recommendation of the international panel,
speaking on Israel's Channel Two television. "It is a plot to
silence us," he said, and here we see the nucleus of the problem.
Filc believes the mission of the department is advocacy, whereas the
proper mission of an academic unit is research and instruction. Much
more serious is Filc's inability to understand that it is NOT a proper
function for an academic department to persecute and harass Israeli
army officers, smearing them as "war criminals," nor to vandalize
Israeli military security points and checkpoints, nor to infiltrate
illegally into Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah and there get
photographed in warm embrace with Arafat (which a faculty member in
this department has already done), nor to organize violent illegal
"protests" (some of which have already been the subject of prosecution
in BGU disciplinary committees). Such circus activities have no place
in academia. They interfere with and distort all efforts at education
and research. Moreover, the shenanigans of the department of politics
at BGU undermine the reputation of every one of us at BGU. Those
indeed were the very words of President Rivka Carmi in a statement
issued in response to the calls by Neve Gordon (who was department
chairman at the time) in the Los Angeles Times and the Guardian (UK)
for an international boycott against Israel!

Shutting down the department of politics at BGU is a matter of
great seriousness. There are precedents in Israel for doing so. Where
there was significant student demand for studies in such a department,
then in those precedent cases the department was completely rebuilt
from scratch after a respite. And that is what has to be done at BGU!

Israel David teaches mathematics and operations research at Ben Gurion
University

Yet another Israeli Academic Leftist Calling for the Murder of Jews

2012-01-27T06:15:00.001-08:00

Allow us to introduce you to one Zvi Elhyani, who is on the teaching
staff at the Bezalel Arts and Crafts College. He is one of the
architects for jihad who are active in Israel in promoting the
Palestinian agenda.

Elhyani is in the news this week for calling for the murder of West
Bank "settlers." He was outted (in Hebrew) at this web page:
http://www.srugim.co.il/27935-%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%A6%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%91%D7%A6%D7%9C%D7%90%D7%9C-%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%AA%D7%A0%D7%97%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%9D
The call to murder settlers appeared on his personal facebook page.
He has also been active in the radical anti-Israel NGO calling itself
"Zochrot" (http://www.zochrot.org/content/%D7%90%D7%9C-%D7%AA%D7%92%D7%99%D7%93%D7%95-%D7%91%D7%92%D7%AA
), whose main goal is to see all Jewish names of towns and sites in
Israel erased and replaced by Arab names. Can you guess who funds
Zochrot? He is one of those anti-Israel extremists who signed a call
for the international community to suppress Israeli sovereignty and
prevent Israel from using force to defend itself against terrorism:
http://oznik.com/petitions/010427.html

Want to ask Israel's Attorney General why Elhyani is not locked away
behind bars for calling for murder? Write to him via Fax
972-2-6467001. Send a copy to Yaakov Neaman, Minister of Justice, at
sar@justice.gov.il . You can also use this form letter to submit
electronically although the headings are in Hebrew:
http://www.forms.gov.il/globalData/GetSequence/GetSequence.aspx?formType=yoetzmishpati1@justice.gov.il
Mail address is: Attorney General of Israel, Ministry of Justice, 29
Salah a-Din Street, Jerusalem, 91010

Want to ask the heads of Betzalel why someone who is issuing calls
for murder is on their faculty? Write to these people:
Bezalel Arts College
President
Prof. Arnon Zuckerman
Mount Scopus Campus
Mount Scopus P.O.Box 24046
Jerusalem 91240
Telephone: 02-5893333
Fax: 02- 5823094
Email: mail@bezalel.ac.il
Officers: http://bezalel.ac.il/en/about/leadership/staff/
Contact Info: http://bezalel.ac.il/en/contact/
Friends Offices: The Friends Organizations
Ms. Amira Ben-Dor
Chairwoman of the Jerusalem Friends of Bezalel
Ms. Jennifer Roth
President of the Friends of Bezalel New York
Friends of Bezalel Academy
of Arts and Design, Inc.
501 Fifth Avenue, New York,
NY 10017

Tel Aviv University Standards on Display

2012-01-26T02:35:00.001-08:00

1. The headline in Haaretz is that some Palestinians hacked into the
Haaretz web site. See
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/pro-palestinian-hackers-crash-haaretz-other-sites-1.409228

Evidently most readers of Haaretz were unaware of the hacking because
the anti-Israel content of the newspaper that had been hacked did not
differ much from its usual fare. The newspaper editors became aware
of the hacking only after a number of readers complained that the
paper was less anti-Israel than usual.

2. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/152127
Haifa School Sympathizes Arab 'Victims' Over Jewish Victims
A Haifa school held a panel with speakers from a leftist group -
denying the father of a terror victim an opportunity to speak.
By David Lev
First Publish: 1/26/2012, 11:21 AM

A Haifa high school on Wednesday sponsored a symposium for students on
how families deal with the loss of loved ones from terror attacks.
The speakers, however, were from a leftist organization, called "The
Jewish-Palestinian Forum of Grieving Parents" - while Ron Kerhmann,
another parent whose child was killed in a terror attack, was denied
the opportunity to speak, he says.

Kehrmann father of Tal Kehrmann, who was killed in 2003 when
terrorists bombed a bus she was riding on in Haifa, while on her way
to the same high school – City School number 5 – took place Wednesday.
With his close ties to the community and given the fact that his
daughter had studied there, Kehrmann asked to speak at the symposium –
but was told by the school that he would not be listed as a speaker.
"I tried for over a week to arrange a time to speak, but was given the
runaround," Kehrmann told Arutz Sheva. "After speaking to school
officials I was told that I just was not wanted at the school."

Kehrmann angrily criticized the school for attempting to equate the
suffering of parents like him – whose parents were killed in terror
attacks by Arabs – with that of Arab parents, whose children were
killed by IDF soldiers during anti-terror raids. "My daughter was
killed in a terrorist attack on a bus while she was on her way to
school. Their children were killed during a legitimate IDF attack"
against terror activities that those "victims" were engaged in, he
added.

Kehrmann says that the school's administration has turned terrorist
victimization into a political football. "They lied to me about
respecting my opinion, but they are not interested in hearing what I
have to say," he says, preferring an overtly political organization,
whose main activities is to opposed IDF roadblocks in Judea and
Samaria. "I call on the Education Ministry to prevent such political
activity in schools. This particular group is to the left of Peace
Now," he added.

The school has not commented on the matter, despite requests by Arutz Sheva.

3. http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/25/the-scourge-of-jewish-self-division/
The Scourge of Jewish Self-Division
Posted by David Solway

4. http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20TAU%20-%20Omar%20Barghouti%20promotes%20BDS%20in%20US.htm

Tel Aviv University's Academic Standards on Display: PhD candidate
Omar Barghouti Does the Jihad Tour

By Lee Kaplan, www.Isracampus.org.il
24/1/2012

Recently Omar Barghouti, a Columbia graduate in electrical engineering
who is now pursuing a PhD at Tel Aviv University in Philosophy spoke
at three occasions in northern California to promote boycott,
divestment and sanctions against Israel, even his own university. Few
people know that Barghouti, who founded the Academic and Cultural
Boycott of Israel, which attacks Israel's academics abroad and Israeli
universities at home, an extension of the Arab League Boycott, is in
fact not a "Palestinian" or Israeli-Arab. He was born in Qatar and
grew up in Kuwait. His home countries are technically still at war
with Israel. Barghouti's fellow TAU students and other academics
organized a petition asking the University to expel him for his
anti-Israel political activities, but TAU's administration has refused
to do so.

Barghouti declared Israel an apartheid state throughout the evening
during his speech held at the Presbyterian Church in Oakland,
California. He saw nothing hypocritical about his own status as a
subsidized graduate student in Israel, and instead likened himself to
Nelson Mandela. The speaking engagements were sponsored by assorted
groups affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement in order
to raise funds for the Middle East Children's Alliance, an ISM group
that launders most of the ISM's "tax deductible" donations on the US
West Coast. Other sponsoring groups included the anti-Israel extremist
group Jewish Voice for Peace, which is made up for the most part of
Marxist Jews and Al Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition,
which calls for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and an
unconditional right of anyone pretending to be a "Palestinian" to
"return" to Israel.

There were about 300 people in attendance at the Oakland event, most
aging 60s fossils. Flyers and the announcement at the start of the
evening, one made by Barghouti himself, said his speech would not be
about Israel but about the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland
movements in the United States. After making one brief allusion to the
OWS movement in the US and claiming economic exploitation and denial
of human rights was "worse in the United States even than in Israel,"
he declared Israel as part of the "one per cent" that is economically
exploiting the other "ninety-nine per cent" of humanity. It reminded
me of similar claims in Der Sturmer. Barghouti spent the next two
hours attacking only Israel and claiming it is an apartheid state like
South Africa was in the 1980's. He also criticized America's presence
in Afghanistan. The audience ate it up, applauding loudly at several
points during his lecture.

Barghouti began the lecture stating, "Israelis have been colonizing
our lands since the Nakba in 1948." Throughout the lecture he
acknowledged no Jewish history or any right to any part of the land of
Israel by Jews.

He continued, making the accusation that Israel had altered history
and "destroyed thousands of Palestinian books," and claimed that there
are still thousands more such books hidden away in the library at Tel
Aviv U. You know, the library where he is supposed to be writing his
PhD. So if the books are in that library, we guess they were never
destroyed. Hmmm.

Barghouti then accused Israel of "a worse massacre than anything done
by European colonialism." Barghouti claimed Israel purposely
suppresses Palestinian education during the Intifadas. "Israel shut
down all Palestinian universities in the 1970's, and in 1994 shut down
schools in the West Bank." Of course, Barghouti did not mention that
those universities were actually built by the Israelis in the first
place and were bases and organizing locations for terrorist groups
murdering Israeli civilians in terrorist attacks. "In 1989, occupied
Palestinians had to organize illegal classes in West Bank schools," he
said, proclaiming this an example of human rights violations and
racism.

Barghouti then made reference to the T-Shirt controversy when some IDF
sniper units had T-shirts made that said "One Shot, Two Kills," that
allegedly showed a pregnant Arab woman in a rifle view scope. The
soldiers involved in that were disciplined by the IDF, although we
think they were simply exercising freedom of speech. Arab media, even
children's programs, routinely call for murdering Jews, but this got
no mention. Barghouti suggested IDF soldiers in T-shirts promote the
idea of raping Palestinian women (which Israeli soldiers never do) and
called these examples as "part of the radicalization program the
entire country is undergoing" by Israel against the Arab population.
He then falsely described conditions in Gaza as the "most subhuman" in
the world. He failed to mention the Jacuzzis and designer stores in
the malls. He recounted an unverified tale of an elderly Palestinian
woman "shot while walking along" there for no reason at all and
accused Israel again of "ethnic cleansing."

"In 2005, " he said, "we saw that we must call for boycott and
sanctions as part of a popular struggle to help shoulder the enormous
responsibility in the oppression of the oppressed." He explained the
meaning of BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions), and called for…
"an end to the 1967 Occupation, ending Israel's apartheid." He vowed,
"Israel must recognize the right of refugees to return." He
conveniently left out the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the
Oslo "Peace Process" and voiced the goals of Hamas that Israel must be
flooded with as many Arabs as possible to overrun the Jewish
population.

Barghouti tried to lecture as an academic, but the problem was he kept
lying through his teeth. Besides false claims about apartheid in
Israel (Barghouti himself is proof this is untrue), he then went on to
claim falsely that 93% of the land in the West Bank is off limits to
non-Jews and said Israel has communities where only Jews can live.
Actually Israel is full of communities where Jews cannot live, only
Arabs. Meanwhile, Barghouti had no criticism of the law in the
Palestinian Authority that metes out a death sentence, even
retroactively, if someone sells his land to a Jew. Barghouti also
repeated the oft-used canard of "Jewish only roads" in the West Bank.

Barghouti trotted out every anti-Israel canard he could. He accused
Israel of a "massacre" in Jenin in 2002 when even the United Nations
said there was no massacre. In that "massacre" 20 Arabs were killed in
the crossfire of a battle started by the terrorists. Moving on to the
Gaza flotilla boats that he dubbed "The Freedom Flotilla," he claimed
Israel had conducted a "massacre" of civilians, those civilians who
attempted to murder Israeli soldiers. Barghouti proudly claimed that
local Bay Area anti-Israel activists had succeeded in getting
dockworkers to refuse to unload an Israeli ship in Oakland last year.
The truth was that the day a strike was called was the wrong day for
the arrival of the ship involved, and later the ship did land and
unload. He gleefully mentioned successes in Sweden, South Africa and
even India where dockworkers had refused to unload Israeli goods for
24 hours. This was met with thunderous applause by his audience made
up mostly of Jewish-Marxist "anti-Zionists".

Barghouti discussed the Arab Spring, particularly in Egypt, which he
called "BDS multiplied" and which he said should encourage "no
normalization with Israel." He then began discussing the 1 per cent
vs. the 99 per cent theme of the Occupy Wall Street people (that is,
their claim that 1% control all wealth for the other 99% of world
population who are "oppressed".) Making the Jews the owners of wealth
is a canard right out of the Middle Ages.

He continued, "Suddenly it makes sense to see Israel was fully
involved in the 1% agenda that included the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq." (Barghouti conveniently ignored the profit mongering by OPEC
and the overstuffed Saudis who actually fund his BDS movement even
today and that the war in Afghanistan followed as a result of the 9/11
attacks on US soil.)

Barghouti explained, "It's the Israel lobby following American
interests that serves the 1%." "The Department of Homeland Security,
the Military, banks and US weapons manufacturers make war "on us
because it's good business," he declared, "but is it good for the
other 99%?" he asked.

"Imagine if the US spent the four billion dollars on the war in
Afghanistan, what that would do to improve the roads," he moaned. It
made me wonder what US roads would be like if we didn't spend the
greater sum than that supporting the Palestinians who only cheer on US
enemies to make war on America and Israel. Barghouti declared his
boycott movement was primarily concerned with democracy and human
justice, goals that would be possible "once our struggles emerge." He
declared, "We must unite for freedom, equal rights, social economics
and can no longer ignore the obligation to join hands in the
struggle!" He then claimed to have researched international law, even
though he is not a lawyer or even a law student, and said that the
Palestinian people should have the right to vote for national
self-determination but that the Jews in Israel have no such voting
rights. "I've researched this and international law says occupiers
have no right to vote for self-determination." 63% of Israel's Jews
were born in Israel. When I asked him why they had no right to vote
for self-determination and would have to live under Arab rule,
Barghouti merely repeated that he researched international law and
occupiers (all the Jews in Israel) have no voting rights at all about
how they should live or be governed.

Barghouti also maintained that Christians were being persecuted in the
Holy Land by Israel, not by the Muslim Palestinians (who have driven
most Christians out of Bethlehem) and that many Christians were on the
same side as him. "After all," he told the audience, "Jesus was a
Palestinian." Again, the audience of mostly Jewish radicals cheered
him on and offered no criticism.

The geriatric Marxist Jews from Jewish Voice for Peace gave him cheers
and ovations on his legal claims, too. The hosts continued to repeat
the Big Lie that Barghouti was a "human rights activist."

Barghouti claimed his movement was in line with his "heroes" like
Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi (Martin Luther King stated that
anti-Zionism as Barghouti promoted all night was merely disguised
anti-Semitism and Gandhi promoted non-violence).

Barghouti concluded his speech calling for "freedom and a dignified
life" for people to not live "under savage apartheid" and declared it
a "moral obligation" and urged those attending to "rebound from their
former savaged society of your colony to find it livable again."
Referring to the Occupation Wall Street movement he repeated our
"oppression is intertwined" concluding, "After Egypt it is our time to
reassert our common humanity. I wish you Egypt!"

The rest of the evening consisted of members of the audience
demonstrating what they were doing to promote BDS against Israel. Some
sang in front of a large American chain retailer in front of shoppers
to "end apartheid" by bankrupting the Soda Stream company and Ahava
products. Barghouti took the stand again and boasted how the BDS
campaign had managed to cost the Veolia Company over a half billion
dollars.

Then Barghouti threw out this whopper: "Israel does not consider
itself a nation", he said. He based his statement on the Supreme Court
finding that a single Israeli identity card was not required when
current cards list religious and ethnic denominations. He declared
this racist but had no criticism for calls by the Palestinians to
demand a Palestinian state be Jew free or that there is a law on the
books there meting out a death sentence for selling land to a Jew. He
told the audience that Israel was responsible for the War in Iraq
insisting that Israel knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass
destruction (all Western intelligence services on their own had the
same information and not from Israel) and that now Israel is trying to
get the US to attack Iran.

The final theme of the evening could be summed up as this by
Barghouti: the only way to realize full equality for society is to
boycott and financially harm the Jews.

A video recording of the event is available should anyone wish to see
it. Anyone who would believe that the goal of the BDS movement is for
peace or any kind of settlement needs to see the audience present that
night that could only root for the destruction of Israel and its
Jewish population, no matter how nonsensical it was.

Everything you need to know about academic freedom and freedom of speech in Israel

2012-01-25T06:46:00.001-08:00

Everything you need to know about academic freedom and freedom of
speech in Israel:

Leftists who insist that only leftists are entitled to exercise
freedom of speech - are fascists.
Leftists who insist that all people who criticize leftists are
McCarthyists - are fascists. They are also McCarthyists.
Leftists who claim that the exercise of freedom of speech by anti-Oslo
dissidents in the 1990s caused Rabin to be assassinated - are
McCarthyists. They are also fascists.
Leftists who claim that no one should be allowed to refer to
anti-Israel traitors as traitors - are themselves fascists.
Leftists who pretend that other leftists who call for BDS or Boycotts,
Divestment and Sanctions against Israel are anything other than
traitors – are liars. They are also fascists.
Leftists who endorse terrorist attacks against Jews are traitors.
Leftists who demand a "Palestinian right of return to Israel" are traitors.
Leftists who endorse Arab fascist or Islamofascist movements - are fascists.
Leftists who support or vote for the communist party are mentally
deranged. They are also fascists.
Leftists who support the elimination of Israel are traitors and fascists.
Leftists who attempt to use the courts to suppress freedom of speech
for non-leftists – are fascists.
Leftists who censor chat lists of academics in order to bar
non-leftist opinion from being expressed - are fascists.
Leftists who demand that non-leftists be silenced because their
exercise of freedom of speech produces violence – are fascists.

Not a dry Diaper among the Tenured Left

2012-01-22T11:21:00.001-08:00

Well you know the radical anti-democratic Left in Israel is upset
when even Haaretz runs a major news story about Isracampus and the
watchdog groups that are monitoring and exposing Israel's tenured
traitors.

Haaretz today ran the following news story, complete with all the
usual spins, half-truths and outright lies you would expect from
Haaretz. Distortions and all, the real message gets through. Haaretz
and the Left are hysterical! The tenured Left is being exposed! The
Israeli and overseas Jewish public are learning the truth! Can
anything be more frightening than that for the Radical anti-Israel
Left?

*****
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/10-percent-of-israeli-academics-labeled-anti-zionist-by-campus-watchdogs-1.408535

10 percent of Israeli academics labeled 'anti-Zionist' by campus watchdogs
Survey comes up with the names of more than 1,000 Israelis, 800 of
whom are academics but also including authors, journalists, public
intellectuals, and past and present cabinet ministers.
By Talila Nesher

Three self-proclaimed watchdog organizations have labeled about 10
percent of Israeli academics as anti-Zionist, according to a recent
study by a group of academics, artists and university students who aim
to counter the categorizations. The organizations, which are open
about their activities, are Im Tirtzu, IsraCampus and Israel Academia
Monitor.

The group's survey came up with the names of more than 1,000 Israelis,
800 of whom are academics but also including authors, journalists,
public intellectuals, and past and present cabinet ministers, that
appear on a list maintained by the trio of organizations.
Members of the group include political scientist Prof. Neve Gordon of
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Israeli Film Directors Guild
chairman Rani Blair; and the chairman of the Israeli Documentary
Filmmakers Forum, Uri Rosenwaks. They recently created the Blacklist
website (blacklist.co.il), which invites visitors to check whether
they themselves appear on the lists.

"There is a real concern for the future of Israeli democracy and about
McCarthyism against anyone who criticizes the government's policies in
the occupied territories or social aspects," Gordon said. "Every week
new names appear on these sites, and we wanted to examine the extent
of the phenomenon. The people who will be hurt most are junior faculty
members who are trying for university positions and are wary of being
'marked out,'" Gordon said.

Israel Academia Monitor said in a statement: "We are not a right-wing
organization, but rather an organization that is unaffiliated
politically and that keeps its distance from politics. Our role is to
protect the universities from political forces, and especially from
the extreme left, that exploits the institutions for its needs and
acts as if they were its private playing field."

University of Haifa economist Prof. Steven Plaut, one of the founders
of IsraCampus, said in a statement: "Our main function is to quote
what these teachers say and write ideologically and politically in
order to bring it to the attention of the public. The issue is not an
ideological argument, but rather publicizing the anti-Israel group
that openly supports the enemy," Plaut said.

Im Tirtzu said: "We are not familiar with the study, but spin and
manipulation cannot obscure the gravity of the deeds of the extreme
left. Anyone who signs petitions in support of the refusal to perform
military service, of Azmi Bishara and of the boycott against Israel,
and who silences students, are marking themselves."

***
First of all, the groups in question are not "Right Wing Groups" but
Zionist non-partisan groups. Isracampus has no ideology or political
stand other than the need for the public to know about Israel's
academic Fifth Column. It believes students, taxpayers, alumni,
journalists, donors, and others have the right to know what tenured
extremists do and say.

Secondly there is no "black list" at all. That is a typical Haaretz
fabrication. There are search engines and indices of names of Israeli
academics who have signed anti-Israel statements and published
anti-Israel opinions, such as calls for world boycotts of Israel.
There are no theater people or literary figures in those indices, in
contrast with the Haaretz article. Also the "1000" and 10% numbers
are all Haaretz inventions. Also, the Haaretz claim that the web
sites target journalists, writers, "public intellectuals" (whatever
that is), and cabinet ministers is another lie. Isracampus only
targets leftist academics.

The "blacklist" web site that is so ballyhooed in the article is an
empty web site set up this week by Ben Gurion University anti-Semite
Neve Gordon. Here is little Slapp-suit Neve whining about how those
critics of the Left are McCarthyists who stifle freedom of speech.
Stifling freedom of speech? Silencing the Left? When the whole goal
of Isracampus is to PUBLICIZE what the Leftists say and let everyone
know what they write!!

Little Neve's pathetic little web site (blacklist.co.il) has no lists
of people who have asked to be added to the "blacklist," in contrast
with what the Haaretz article claims. And the search engine on that
site, which promises to allow academics to search the watchdog web
sites to see if they are mentioned or discussed, does not work. See
this: http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Steve%20Plaut%20-%20Neve%20Gordon%20website%20mocks%20Isracampus.htm

McCarthysim they said? Well, the usual McCarthyist censors at Haaretz
blocked and removed all right-wing "talkbacks" from the article on the
English web site, but on the Hebrew web site the talkbacks regarding
this article were about 4 to 1 in favor of the Right and against the
Left.

But the Haaretz article has now put the reading Left on notice! They
cannot pretend they do not know! They cannot hide! The good guys are
watching them. And they are hysterical! Not a dry diaper in
Gordongrad!

The Jew Flu

2012-01-18T11:39:00.001-08:00

1. The following appeared in Haaretz, believe it or not. Worth reading:

The Jew Flu: The strange illness of Jewish anti-Semitism
Flus are contagious and incurable, but containable; the ancient and
resilient virus known as Jew Flu is no different.
By Uzi Silber
Tags: Israel news anti-Semitism

Get Haaretz on iPhone Get Haaretz on Android Diagnosis

The 1930s Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson asked "Is there another
People on Earth so emotionally twisted that they consider everything
their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape,
robbery committed by their enemies fill their hearts with admiration
and awe?"

This is Jew Flu - the virus of Jewish Anti-Semitism, and its Jewish
Anti- and Post-Zionist mutations, afflicting a small but inordinately
loud minority of Hebrews.

Its modern symptoms are a rejection of Israel's identity as a Jewish
state and a dismissal of its right to defend itself militarily, while
embracing the goals of its nihilistic Arab enemies. Those infected
with the virus wildly inflate Israeli sins real or imagined, while
excusing or rationalizing Palestinian anti-semitism and outrages
against Jews.

Those afflicted with Jew Flu often view the notion of Peoplehood as an
artifice, which implies a rejection of Jewish national
self-determination and acceptance of the 90-year-old Palestinian Arab
contention that Jews are not a nation but merely members of a
religion, and as such don?t merit a national home of their own.

Is Jew Flu a bona-fide illness? Michael Welner, a psychiatrist at New
York University, suggests that Jewish Anti-Semitism is akin to a
personality disorder, enabling a person to "derive some psychological
benefit from this pathological thinking."

What causes Jew Flu? Harvard psychiatrist Kenneth Levin argues for
twin culprits: so-called 'Stockholm Syndrome', where "population
segments under chronic siege commonly embrace the indictments of their
besiegers however bigoted and outrageous", as well as "the
psychodynamics of abused children who blame themselves for their
situation and believe they could mollify their tormenters if they were
'good'."

Julie Ancis, a psychology professor at Georgia State University says
that it isn't "uncommon for a minority group with a history of
oppression and persecution to possess internalized self-hatred
regarding their cultural/religious identity."

I'm no therapist, but that won't restrain me from proposing my own
theory for the ultimate cause of Jew Flu. More on that later.

Since the defamations of Jew Flu victims are propagated across the
Internet and are extensively documented and challenged in many fine
books and articles, repeating them here would be redundant.

Suffice it to say that Noam Chomsky, Daniel Boyarin, Joel Kovel, Avrum
Burg, Ilan Pappe, Steve Quester, Jacqueline Rose, Tony Judt, Naomi
Klein, Michael Neumann, Ben Ehrenreich, (the apparently "outed")
Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and their ilk, spout pronouncements eerily similar
to the propaganda routinely ejaculated by representatives of Fatah,
Hamas or Hezbollah.

At the same time, a hearty "shout out" is due those who have made it
their business to forcefully rebut the Jewish defamers, including
Andrea Levin, Edward Alexander, Alan Dershowitz, David Solway and
others. Those interested in a quick and free primer on Jew Flu should
download Alvin Rosenfeld's UJA-sponsored brief, "Progressive Jewish
Thought and the New Anti-Semitism".

History

Jew Flu, of course, isn't new: It has lurked in our midst for
millennia. Jews collaborated with Greeks, Romans and Inquisitors;
Bolshevik self loathers displayed savagery towards their brethren;
their prophet Karl Marx was described by author Rafael Patai as the
"most influential of Jewish self haters", who thought "Israelite
faith" most repugnant, and whose rabid anti-Semitism was attributed by
the historian Simon Dubnow to "the natural hatred of the renegade for
the camp he deserted."

Incredibly, certain young Jews in Weimar Germany, members of a certain
Association of National-German Jews were sufficiently maddened by Jew
Flu to attempt to "identify and ingratiate (themselves) with the Nazi
Party".

Jew Flu developed its anti-Zionist strain in the decades preceding the
creation of Israel: renowned philosopher Martin Buber of Hebrew
University and others actually justified the Palestinian Arab pogroms
of 1921, 1929 and the late 30s, urging that desperate Jewish holocaust
refugees be permitted to enter Palestine only with Arab permission.

In 1944, and with the destruction of European Jewry proceeding apace,
Lessing Rosenwald, the President of the American Council for Judaism
equated the ideal of Jewish Statehood with the concept of a racial
state "the Hitlerian concept".

Following remission during the post-Holocaust years, Jewry experienced
a relapse of Jew Flu in the aftermath of the '67 Six Day War. In the
U.S., young Jewish radicals of the New Left branded Israel a fascist,
colonial power while praising Arab countries as progressive and
revolutionary - unsurprising since many were Soviet client states.

They remained largely silent as Soviet tanks crushed the 1968 Prague
Spring - presumably a 'progressive' development.

New Left sentiments found expression in Israel even during the
aftermath of the traumatic Yom Kippur War; at a Tel Aviv reception in
late 1973, my mother found herself amid a chatty crowd of cocktailing
cultural figures casually dismissive of their own country's right to
exist.

The infection among Israel's cultural elites intensified through the
Lebanon War and the two Intifadas that sandwiched the delusional Oslo
era. As author Aharon Meged lamented in 1994, there existed "an
emotional and moral identification by the majority of Israel's
intelligentsia, and its print and electronic media, with people
committed to our annihilation."

Epitomizing this "moral identification" were the certain prominent
Jewish journalists who, according to Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea,
crucially failed the so-called 'lynch test', by exhibiting an
inability to ever criticize Palestinian terror, even following the
widely televised gruesome execution of two Jews by a Palestinian mob
in Ramallah In 2000.

Metamorphosis

It was at this time that Jew Flu claimed a childhood friend of mine.
We'd come of age together in the early '80s, like-minded Zionists, he
more "Kahanish" in temperament. Immigrating to Israel the day after
graduation, he'd serve in theIDF, settle in Jerusalem, marry, spawn a
brood, and settle into the life of an Israeli academic, where anti
Zionist stances are common and open identification as an Israeli
patriot is tantamount to career suicide.

Infection struck during the Oslo years: before the millennium was out,
the youthful Kahanist yeshiva boy had morphed into a militant Jewish
Anti Zionist, mindlessly spouting hackneyed and malicious anti-Israel
canards on leftwing and Arab websites, and regularly consorting with a
posse of Arab academics in Ramallah.

This episode recalled a scene from "Radio Days", the Woody Allen movie
in which an uncle fasting on Yom Kippur indignantly watches the Jewish
communists next door brazenly barbecuing. In Holiday suit he marches
out the front door to scold the Reds on their evil ways, only to
return shortly after chewing on a chicken drumstick, indignantly
decrying religion as the opiate of the masses.

Those like my friend afflicted with Jew Flu deny their infection,
contending that criticism of Israel isn't Anti-Semitism or even
Anti-Israel.

Helpfully, Natan Sharansky formulated his so-called 3D litmus test to
clearly distinguish mere Israel critics from Jew Flu victims, and has
allowed me to diagnose my old friend.

As it turns out, the afflicted regularly engage in at least one of the
following -Demonization (comparing Israeli actions to Nazism and
referring to Arab refugee camps as Auschwitz);- Double Standards
(singling out Israel for human rights abuses while ignoring the
blatant human rights violators such as Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Palestinian Authority, North Korea, Cuba, China, Myanmar etc);
and Delegitimization (denying Israel the fundamental right to exist as
a Jewish state)

During March 2002, Jihadist suicide murderers were exploding on
Israeli buses every other day, massacring and maiming hundreds of Jews
in a cascade of latter-day pogroms; savage images of Haim Nahman
Bialik's monumental poem, "City of Slaughter" blazed across the broken
land.

125 Jews were massacred and hundreds were wounded by Palestinian
suicide murderers that month. Yet unsurprisingly my stricken friend
declined comment.

My friend seems to amuse his Arab colleagues: Appearing at a
conference some years ago at Cairo's American University, an Egyptian
fellow panelist quipped to the audience that our mutual friend was
"more pro-Palestinian than me - I am more pro-Israel than him."

Incidentally, this college has since instituted a ban on Israeli academics.

At this point allow me to complicate things: It's easy to assume that
those struck with Jew Flu would be contemptuous of Jewish religious
observance. They often hold Marxist views, which would imply an
atheist outlook.

Yet what one should one make of my friend who performs Kiddush on
Friday nights, fasts on Yom Kippur and uses two sets of dishes in his
kosher kitchen? Would such Jewish customs be performed by an
anti-Semite?

Knesset speaker Avrum Burg is a lifelong modern orthodox Jew, a skull
capped davener whose Jew Flu was latent for years but burst out into
the open when he took to smearing Israel in Nazi-like browns.

Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin are pleasant, prominent and yarmulked
professors of Jewish history who don tefilin daily, daven on Shabbat
and holidays and are easily mistaken in appearance for West Bank
settlers.

Yet Daniel is comfortable vilifying Israel regularly as a violent
outlaw state. And Jonathan admitted to me some years ago during an
especially sweaty Simchat Torah "hakafa" on the Lower East Side that
his views are identical if not even more radical than Daniel's (if
that was possible.)

Actually, it is interesting that the views of such radical yet
observant Jews resemble the tenets of Catholic Liberation Theology.
But could such a trio be accused of outright anti-Semitism?

The Burgs and Boyarins of this world have long revered another devout
Jew, the departed Yishayahu Leibowitz, a renowned scholar, recipient
of the Israel Prize, and editor of the Hebrew Encyclopedia, a
Jerusalemite who habitually referred to drafted Israeli soldiers who
happened to be defending his charmed way of life as "Judeo-Nazis".

Was Leibowitz an anti-Semite?

Submitting their pronouncements to the Sharansky test demonstrates
that even tefilin wearing, kosher food eating Kiddush reciters can
speak and write like anti-Semites.

Prognosis

But back to the elusive cause of Jew Flu: what makes one Jew
vulnerable and not another? Wouldn't a far larger proportion of Jews
fall prey to Jew Flu if, say, Stockholm syndrome was the culprit? Is
there a prime mover, some physiological or neurological smoking gun
pointing to a root cause?

There may be. David Brooks recently reported in the New York Times on
research by a Haifa University team led by Reem Yahya who studied the
brains scans of Arabs and Jews while showing them images of hands and
feet in painful situations.

Brooks reports that "the two cultures perceived pain differently. The
Arabs perceived higher levels of pain over all while the Jews were
more sensitive to pain suffered by members of a group other than their
own."

This phenomenon was epitomized by Rosa Luxemburg, a prominent
Bolshevik and Jew Flu victim. "I have no room in my heart for Jewish
suffering," declared Rosa the Red. "Why do you pester me with Jewish
troubles? I feel closer to the wretched victims of the rubber
plantations of Putumayo or the Negroes in Africa... I have no separate
corner in my heart for the ghetto."

And then there's the modest story Ahmad the cabbie related to me last
week as we drove through Eilat-like Palm Springs: Ahmad's brother in
Nablus was employed for many years by an Israeli Jewish building
contractor. When the outbreak of Intifada in 2000 permanently barred
Ahmad's brother from work in Israel, his Jewish boss continued to pay
the brother's salary for five years.

The intriguing research out of Haifa suggests that Jews may very well
be inherently altruistic. But while exhibiting more sensitivity to
another group's pain is one thing, embracing the goals of people
openly committed to one's destruction is a form of madness.

So here's my ultimate theory for the cause of this nefarious virus:
Jew Flu is a condition in which being "more sensitive to pain suffered
by members of a group other than (one's) own metastasizes into a
malignant emotional and moral identification with people committed to
(one's) annihilation."

Like any other virus, Jew Flu is contagious but containable. Yet
ultimately incurable.

2. The Israeli treasonous Left, led by the gyno-fascists from the
"Machsom Watch" terror group, continue to demonize Israel for running
checkpoints in the West Bank. All those poor "Palestinians" getting
inconveniences there. Better that Jewish school busses be blown to
bits than some Paletsinians get inconvenienced. Well I liked the
following message, reprinted here:

Reprint of message from Dan Friedman <topcopy@mindspring.com> wrote:

[It's been some time since we've heard about Arabs being humiliated
at Israeli checkpoints. That meme seems to have run out of steam. Yet
the devilish Israelis are still at it. If you need to see proof, the
story below should provide it. Now put yourself in an Arab terrorist's
shoes. You're stopped and frisked at an Israeli checkpoint, then
caught flagrante delicto and arrested when explosives and weapons are
found in your backpack. For a Palestinian jihadist trained and tasked
to kill as many Jews as possible, can you think of anything more
humiliating than that? df]

Ynetnews.com, 1/16/2012

Palestinians caught with 10 pipe bombs near checkpoint

Two suspects arrested near military court where hearing on Fogel
family killer scheduled to take place

Military Police forces working at the Salem checkpoint caught two
Palestinians carrying 10 pipe bombs, a gun and several bullets. The
bombs were dismantled and the Palestinians were turned over to
security forces.

An initial investigation suggests that the soldiers detected two
Palestinians in their 20s approaching a checkpoint near the military
court carrying two bags. After a check they discovered the contents of
the bags.

Last week, a Palestinian man trying to cross a Jenin checkpoint was
caught in possession of 11 explosive devices.

"An investigation of the previous incident suggests that the suspects
planned on carrying out a terrorist attack at the court," the
battalion commander Lt. Col. Erez Raven said. "The other side is not
familiar with our MOs which change from time to time and we raised our
alert level in the past week. There were no terror threat alerts."

The Salem Military Court is scheduled to discuss a hearing on the
sentence of Amjad Awad, one of the murderers of the Fogel family.

3. There is a marvelous poster making the internet rounds, also
being printed on tee shirts and sweat shirts. Its wearers will no
doubt be arrested for "incitement." That will not stop me though.
You can see the poster here:
http://hayamin.org/forum/index.php?topic=25912.0

It says in Hebrew, "Sometimes you just have to take off the Kipa."
The word kipa means both yarmulka and dome. You then see people in
the poster removing the Dome of the Rock structure (not to be confused
with the Al-Aqsa Mosque) from where it pollutes the Temple Mount. The
Dome of the Rock is not a mosque.

http://hayamin.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=jl7rf2k2kp20bpgv2sti0sv381&action=dlattach;topic=25912.0;attach=8245;image

Ben Gurion University's Racist Policy of Discriminating against Jews

2012-01-14T10:37:00.000-08:00

1. Racism and discrimination have suddenly appeared as a serious
problem in Israeli academia. The racism and discrimination in
question is anti-Jewish and is being practiced by Ben Gurion
"University." That is right, 73 years after Kristallnacht Jews are
being discriminated against and barred from attending a university
program in psychology at Ben Gurion "University" because it is only
open to Arabs. And a Jewish victim of this overt discrimination has
filed suit with the Supreme Court.

The program in question is a MA program in psychology open only to
Arabs and particularly to Bedouins. Jews who qualify are excluded.
In addition, the program is secret. Ben Gurion University has been
trying to hide it from the media and from students and even from the
government.

The program seems designed for those who wish to become school
psychologists or educators in Arab schools, particularly Bedouin
schools, although that is not exactly how it is officially defined.
Well, one Yosef Malka, who happens to be Jewish and who already works
in a Bedouin school as a teacher, applied for the program. He was
turned down by Ben Gurion "University." No Jews or dogs allowed into
the program.

Malka has filled a Supreme Court suit against the university, the
Israeli Ministry of Education, and Council for Higher Education in
Israel. In his suit he claims this discriminatory program is
operating in secret, without proper transparency. While working as a
teacher in a Bedouin school, Malka heard about the secret program and
decided to apply. In spite of the fact that he had already earned a
BA with honors, he was rejected by BGU. In one of the letters of
rejection he got from Prof. Shifra Sagi, from BGU's Department of
Education, she admitted the program was funded with a special
off-budget allotment of money from the Budget and Planning Committee
of Israel's Council on Higher Education and that it is closed to Jews.
Sagi has collaborated with and was a devotee of the late notorious
BGU anti-Zionist professor Daniel Bar-On (who equated the Palestinian
"Nakba" with the Holocaust -
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/2265 ). .

The case is now awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court.

It is not clear whether or not Malka offered Ben Gurion University
a compromise solution whereby any Jew admitted into the program could
attend while wearing a yellow star.

Fuller story in Hebrew in Makor Rishon, January 13, 2012

2. There are three details I left out of my report on the landmark
decision by the Supreme Court in Israel this week concerning automatic
entitlement to Israeli citizenship for foreign spouses of Israeli
Arabs. The Knesset had passed a law that there is no automatic
entitlement, but the judicial activists and their Leftist NGO allies
attempted to get the court to rule that the Knesset law is
"unconstitutional." (A bit bizarre given that Israel has no
constitution.)

Anyway the three missing details are these:

A. The "automatic entitlement to residency/citizenship for spouses of
Israeli Arabs" has already been used as a tactic to smuggle terrorists
into Israel and indeed was a major consideration in the opinion
written by the majority of six justices in denying the petition.

B. Among those who voted with the judicial activists to declare the
law unconstitutional was Judge Edmund Levy, a religious man born in
Iraq, usually considered to be a man of integrity and solidly to the
Right. He is about to retire (judges have to by age 70 in Israel).
Levy is an old-time Herut-nik He has often challenged the ruling
Court leftist elite and is considered a courageous man of principle.
At least he was until the vote this week. So why did he join the
moonbats on the bench in trying to create a Palestinian right of
return via marriage?

C. Ironically, given how Levy voted, the Beinisch team lost this
round of imposing leftist judicial tyranny on the country only thanks
to the legal problems of Judge Yoram Danziger. A far leftist, you
may recall that Danziger issued a court ruling that the anti-Israel
propaganda film "Jenin Jenin" is NOT slanderous when it claims that a
group of Israeli soldiers carried out Nazi-like massacres, even after
the film's director, Mohammed Bakri, himself admitted that the film is
a tissue of lies. Well, when the "citizenship entitlement" case came
up for deliberation, Danziger was under suspension from the bench
while the police and Prosecution investigated him for his intimate
dirty ties to one of the most corrupt local politicians in Israel.
Being a leftist, the Prosecution of course proclaimed Danziger as
clean as a hound's tooth. The only people in Israel who are NOT aware
of Danziger's sleaze seem to be the people working in the Prosecutor's
office. Anyway, it was only thanks to his being suspended that he was
unable to vote with the Beinisch clique and tilt the Supreme Court
ruling this week in favor of leftist judicial mindlessness, judicial
tyranny, and court-imposed Israeli self-annihilation.

3. http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=253441

Comprehending the incomprehensible – Part I
By MARTIN SHERMAN
13/01/2012

Into The Fray: The first of a two-part analysis of why Israel is
losing the international battle for hearts and minds.

Israel has made itself defenseless. Israel has vacated the
battleground of the mind. Israeli 'hasbara' is a JOKE! – British
columnist Melanie Phillips, IBA Television, 2011

One of the gravest strategic threats facing Israel is its accelerating
international delegitimization. This is developing into a strategic
constraint that is increasingly curtailing the nation's ability to
protect itself and its citizens. Even more troubling, it is
undermining international recognition of Israel's right to exercise
self-defense, even in the most blatant cases of aggression against it.

Strategic debacle
Without wishing to diminish the significance of innate hostility
towards Israel and the Jews from many sources in the international
system, the present dismal and untenable situation has arisen in large
measure because of the abysmal job the Israeli leadership has done in
conducting – or more accurately, misconducting – its public diplomacy.

Indeed, Prof. Eitan Gilboa, a well-known authority on public
diplomacy, warns: "The lack of an adequate PD [public diplomacy]
program has significantly affected Israel's strategic outlook and
freedom of action. Any further neglect of PD would not only restrict
Israel's strategic options, it would be detrimental to its ability to
survive in an increasingly intolerant and hostile world."

Many find it puzzling why Israel – with its proven record of
extraordinary achievement in so many other fields of human endeavor –
does such a poor job in presenting its case to the world.

An inescapable truth
For anyone seeking the principal reason why Israel is losing the
public diplomacy war, the answer is difficult to accept, yet very easy
to prove.

Israel is losing the battle because it doesn't want to win.

Or to put it differently: The people charged with the nation's public
diplomacy have a worldview that prevents them from adopting a winning
strategy. Indeed, this chronic malaise was aptly diagnosed by Daniel
Pipes when he observed: "No one at the upper echelons of Israel's
political life articulates the imperative for victory." (More on this
later).

Although difficult to accept, the lack of will to win is easy to
prove. In gauging the motivation of any organization to achieve an
objective, one of the most important indicators is the resources it
allots for to achieve it.

Clearly, if the objective is considered important, more resources will
be allotted, and vice-versa.

Surrender syndrome
Israel's public diplomacy budget is ludicrously small.

Indeed, as one government minister bemoaned: "It is dreadful to hear
that Bamba (a snack produced by the Osem corporation), has a
promotional budget two to three times the size of the total state
budget for public diplomacy."

This frugality is not dictated by a lack of resources. Indeed, when
Israel has desired to achieve an un-budgeted objective, money has
rarely been an obstacle.

For example, when billions of shekels were needed for the construction
of the West Bank security barrier, that was no problem; when billions
of dollars were needed for the Gaza disengagement, that was no problem
either.

Likewise, the tens of billions of dollars required for the planned
"convergence" (i.e.
withdrawal) from Judea and Samaria were not considered an
insurmountable obstacle, even though it was clear the money would not
be coming from the American taxpayer.

In last week's column, I pointed out that if a small fraction of 1
percent of GDP were devoted to public diplomacy, this would generate a
budget of $1 billion – rather than the paltry sums provided today.

So if the Israel leadership chooses not to allot available resources
to assertively promote Israel's case abroad, to resolutely defend its
international image, to explain its operational constraints and
security imperatives, to elucidate why certain measures are
indispensable for the safety of its citizens, it must mean that – for
one reason or another – it does not wish to. There is no other
rational explanation.

How can one account for this syndrome of submissive surrender?

The key to the conundrum
This is a conundrum that cannot be deciphered without a firm grasp of
the sociological – rather than the political – topography of country
in general, and of the priorities and preferences of powerful civil
society elites in particular.

Without this insight it is impossible to understand the dramatic and
disturbing events that have taken place in Israel over the past two
decades. Without it, it is impossible to understand:
• Why a country that displays such technotactical brilliance is
afflicted by such strategic imbecility;
• Why hawkish candidates consistently win elections, but then
immediately adopt the failed policy of their defeated dovish rivals;
• Why the doctrine of political appeasement and territorial
concessions is repeatedly and consistently disproven, but somehow
never discredited – and certainly never discarded;
• Why the Israeli political establishment has not embraced more
appreciatively and mobilized more effectively the huge potential in
the support of communities such as the Evangelical Christians across
the world, and particularly in the US, as a strategic asset.

None of these phenomena makes any sense unless one understands the
decisive role that civil society elites have in setting the direction
of the country's strategic agenda – no matter who gets elected. As
will become clear later, understanding this role is also the key to
deciphering the riddle of Israel's dismal public diplomacy
performance.

Detrimental, dysfunctional, disloyal
Sadly, this is a role that is not only decisive, but also in many ways
detrimental, dysfunctional and at times disloyal.

If to some this uncharitable description appears excessively harsh,
consider the following examples and decide for yourselves how to
characterize the conduct of civil society elites in the media, the
academia and the legal establishment, who (a) accuse Israel of being
an "apartheid state" and support international boycott and sanctions
against their own county, such as Prof. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion
University, who declared: "Israel today is an apartheid state. I have
decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement...launched by Palestinian activists."

(b) portray Israel as a bloodthirsty, intolerant nation bent on the
persecution of minorities, such as Prof. Aeyal Gross of Tel Aviv
University, who characterized Israel as "a society where shooting at
children of the 'other' is the norm" and the Israeli public as
"indifferent or worse to Israel's widespread killing of Palestinian
youth?" (c) condemn Israeli policies as being on a par with or worse
than those of the apartheid regime in South Africa, such as the poet,
writer and lecturer, Yitzhak Laor, who alleged that "Israel's
apartheid is worse... more ruthless than that seen in South Africa....
We have to get rid of Zionism. What lies behind Zionism are interests
and a huge army hungering to justify its existence."

(d) condone – and indeed appear to endorse – Palestinian terrorism
against Israeli civilians, such as Prof. Oren Yiftachel of Ben-Gurion
University, who suggested that "Palestinian shelling from Gaza should
be perceived as a prison uprising... suppressed with terror by the
Israeli state."

(e) deny the legitimacy of Israel preventative measures to ensure the
security of the country and the safety of its citizens, such as
journalist Gideon Levy, who in an article titled "The neighborhood
bully strikes again," written at the outset of the retaliatory
Operation Cast Lead, undertaken to quell the firing of thousands of
rockets at civilian communities, decried "Israel's violent responses
[which] cross every red line of... morality, international law,"
asserting, "What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime," and such as
Prof. Fania Oz-Salzberger of the University of Haifa, who following
the Gaza Flotilla episode, when Israeli commandos were forced to
defend themselves against a mob endeavoring to disembowel them,
endorsed the international censure of Israel in a hastily published
article titled "Ashamed of My Country," proclaiming that "the
almost-unanimous condemnation is spot on. I am ashamed," and elsewhere
asserting that "the true-blue pirates were the uniformed Israeli
commandos."

(f) ignore or obscure the fact that Israel policy towards the
Palestinians is not driven by a discriminatory doctrine of racial
superiority but by proven security concerns, such as columnist Akiva
Eldar, who, in an article titled "Are Israel and apartheid South
Africa really different?" dismissed the security realities, declaring:
"As far as discriminatory practices are concerned, it's hard to find
differences between white rule in South Africa and Israeli rule," or
such as former attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair, who charged that
Israel "enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society engaging
in theft.... We established an apartheid regime."

THIS IS but a small sampling of the assault on Israeli legitimacy from
within its own civil society elites. Many examples abound of similar
distortions, misrepresentations and exaggerations, of similar
half-truths, non-truths and full-blooded fabrications from many other
"intellectuals," whether self-professed radical post-Zionists, or
self-proclaimed "liberal" pro-Zionists.

The noxious nexus
But more than a expression of the political predilections of those who
articulate them, these derogatory attitudes towards Israel reflect a
socio-cultural milieu, in which the personal and professional
interests of its members impose a code of conformity to political
correctness – irrespective of any divergence this may have from the
facts. It is a code strictly enforced – not by any formal fiat, but by
the consequences of any violation.

No deviation beyond "acceptable" limits is brooked, and any such
"delinquency" is likely to have grave repercussions in terms of
livelihood, promotion and even social acceptability of the
"perpetrator."

This brings us to the nexus between the role of Israeli civil society
elites and government policy in general and public diplomacy in
particular. This is a topic which I shall elaborate on in detail in
next week's column (Part II).

In it, I will show how the combination of their unelected positions of
power and privilege in the media, academia and legal establishment, on
the one hand, and the nature of their personal and professional
interests, on the other, confers on these elites both the ability and
the motivation to determine the direction of the strategic agenda of
the nation.

Naturally, this is a direction that reflects the worldview of the
socio-cultural milieu they belong to, and which they can impose on the
government no matter who prevails at the polls. This neutralizes voter
preferences in the governance of the nation and dangerously undercuts
the underpinnings of the democratic system.

This also impinges on the formulation and implementation of Israel's
public diplomacy.

After all, the senior professionals charged with conducting the
county's public diplomacy are drawn from – and interface with – the
elites discussed previously.

In effect, this precludes them from adopting any strategy that would
undermine their own worldview and dooms Israeli efforts to failure.
But more on that next week.
No conspiracy
In closing, it is important to underscore that what is set out here is
not a theory of a conscious conspiracy, contrived by some purposely
malevolent elitist cabal. Rather, it is the elucidation of a mechanism
comprising the accumulated consequences of individual decisions and
actions driven by the short-term pursuit of prestige and profit of a
group of empowered individuals, and which trump considerations of the
long-term interest of the wider collective.

It is essential to understand this mechanism.

Otherwise, it will be impossible to "comprehend the incomprehensible,"
to understand why "Israel has made itself defenseless," why Israel has
"vacated the battleground of the mind" and why Israeli hasbara is an
ineffective joke.

More important, without such an understanding it will be impossible to
formulate any remedies.

The Landmark Supreme Court Ruling, and - Paychecks for Perverts

2012-01-12T02:44:00.001-08:00

1. For years Israel has sat back while a sort of "Palestinian Right
of Return" was being implemented under everyone's noses. It consisted
of Arab citizens of Israel's marrying Palestinians from the West Bank,
Gaza or elsewhere and demanding that their spouses be granted Israeli
citizenship. Some of the marriages are fictional, like "Green Card
Weddings" in the US. Many others are multiple wives for Moslems,
especially Bedouins. No one ever stopped the Israeli partner from
going to live with the spouse in the spouse's location outside
Israel's Green Line!

The Israeli Left has long demanded that any spouse of any Israeli Arab
citizen be granted automatic residence rights and citizenship in
Israel. It goes without saying that spouses do NOT get automatic
citizenship in most other countries just because they marry a citizen.
(This includes the US.) The Left represents any reluctance to grant
automatic citizenship as a violation of human rights, especially the
"right to marry."

Now no one is challenging the right of Israeli Arabs to marry
non-Israeli Arabs or anyone else. They can marry "Palestinians" all
the want and go live with their spouses in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, or
Brooklyn. The real problem is the demand that unlimited immigration
into Israel be permitted to all non-Israeli Arab "spouses." It is all
part of the decades-long campaign by the Left to make Israel as
non-Jewish as possible, to minimize demographically the Jewish
majority in Israel. That is why the Left also wants unlimited free
entry to all Africans who would like to enter Israel as "refugees" and
earn Israeli wages.

Anyway, the question of the "right to marry" and the right of spouses
to automatic citizenship has been under deliberation in the courts and
media in Israel, and yesterday the Israeli Supreme Court issued a
landmark decision in the matter. The ruling affects not only this
specific issue but may signal the beginning of change in the Supreme
Court itself. At last.

Usually Supreme Court judges in Israel sit in a panel of three out of
the full set (this is very different form the US Supreme Court
practice!) For difficult cases, larger panels are used. The ruling
on this case was made by a panel of 11 judges, which is unusually
large.

The panel ruled 6 against 5 in favor of sanity and legal common sense.
It rejected the demand that residence and citizenship be an automatic
entitlement for spouses of Israelis (and of course they meant Israeli
Arabs.) The Israeli Left is squealing in indignation at this defeat
and at this "violation of fundamental human rights." Haaretz is so
livid that it turned red – ok, it was already red to begin with.

The breakdown of the vote in the Court is also instructive. The five
who voted FOR the entitlement to citizenship were the Beinisch Clique,
and included the Beinisch judicial activists. Edna Arbel and the Arab
judge Salim Joubram voted with Beinisch. Among the six who voted for
sanity were Neal Handel and Eliezer Rivlin, both of whom (with
Joubran) refused to defend freedom of speech in the Gordon-Plaut SLAPP
suit court case. Perhaps most importantly, Asher Gronis, who is about
to take over for Beinisch as Chief Justice, voted against the
entitlement and in favor of sanity!
Perhaps this augurs well for the Israelites!

2. Paychecks for Perverts:
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/12/paychecks-for-pedophiles/

Paychecks for Pedophiles
Posted By Steven Plaut On January 12, 2012

The Greek government does not cease to beg the EU and international
institutions for spare change in order to help the country dig itself
out of its debt debacle. But, as it turns out, the Greek government
evidently really has too much spare budgetary funds, money it is
desperate to find a way to waste.
Indeed that is the only plausible explanation for the decision by the
government of Greece a few days ago to start funding pedophiles. No,
that is not a spoof and not a misprint. According to the Associated
Press, the Greek government has just recognized pedophiles as a
population of the "disabled," entitled under law to governmental
disability compensation and added to the country's welfare roll. The
children who are the victims of those pedophiles evidently are not.
Pedophiles are not the only folks being added to the growing lists of
those who may enjoy free handouts and disability income from the Greek
government. (Notice I did not say benefits "paid for by the Greek
taxpayer," since so much of the Greek national budget is not covered
by them these days.) Exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs were also just
added to the welfare roll list that already includes pyromaniacs,
compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists. Under the new
Greek "disability" rules and categories, pedophiles will get larger
welfare checks than people who have undergone organ transplants.
Peeping Toms will enjoy a higher level of support than diabetics.
The additions to the welfare roll were denounced by the Greek National
Confederation of Disabled People and its leader Yiannis Vardakastanis,
who is blind. They are concerned that all the additions will lead to
the reduction in support levels for people with real disabilities. Now
almost the only people in Greece who will not be recognized as
"disabled" are those who abide by the law. Under the circumstances,
those law abiders should really be the first group to be acknowledged
as disabled, because they are clearly insane.
What is one to make of all this?
The first conclusion is that this new set of insane "disability"
policies serves as a perfect demonstration of what led Greece to the
debtors dog house in the first place. For many years the Greek
governments of both the leading parties have handled their finances
like the cartoon king in the Wizard of Id, handing out massive
wide-scale exemptions from payment of taxes while ladling out populist
largess with a soup spoon so large that it could quench the thirst of
mythological Greek gods.
The second conclusion is that what we observe in Greece is political
correctness on crack and steroids. Here is the ultimate and natural
culmination of the attempts to subject society to the idiocies of
political correctness. When "approval" becomes a universal
entitlement, when all condemnation of all forms of behavior is a
reactionary manifestation of intolerance and bigotry, why should not
pedophilia and kleptomania be added to the lists of behavior about
which one must never ever be judgmental?
But perhaps the most important lesson from the Greek policies is that
there seem to be no limits to the "medicalization" of misbehavior.
For decades now, growing numbers of evil, destructive, anti-social,
and deviant behavior have been "medicalized," converted into medical
conditions. Once they are classified as medical conditions, those who
engage in such behavior get an automatic "pass" from society. They
often also get money. While not quite as insane as the Greek
policies, the United States has digested a huge bowl of similar idiocy
within the framework of the Americans with Disabilities Act, first
passed in 1990.
Definitions of disabilities are getting sillier and sillier in many
parts of the world. In the United States, the current version of the
Americans with Disabilities Act defines the term "disability" with
respect to an individual as: (A) a physical or mental impairment that
substantially limits one or more major life activities of such
individual; (B) a record of such an impairment; or (C) being regarded
as having such an impairment.
From the start, public safety was not considered valid grounds for
"discriminating" against people with "disabilities." So a group of
near-sighted people sued when they were denied jobs as airline pilots.
People with serious psychiatric problems have sued when denied various
jobs and positions in which the public could be placed in harm's way
as a result of their employment. People with contagious diseases like
hepatitis cannot be denied jobs in which they may infect others, since
that would be discrimination against the disabled. It is even more
difficult to deny positions to those with AIDS or HIV.
But that is just the tip of the disability iceberg. There are oodles
of court cases that illustrate the absurdities. An Orange County
school district was ordered to pay for private schooling for a pupil
expelled for violence, plus 360,000 dollars in reparations to him. A
violent schizophrenic received reparations when he was fired from his
post office job for threatening other employees and also threatening
to murder the president of the United States. A guidance counselor in
a school in Hartford, Connecticut won compensation after being fired
for possession of cocaine, because addiction is a disability. A
Boston professor won compensation after being fired for sexually
harassing students, claiming that his medication was responsible for
his "disability." A man, who suffers from diabetes and frequently
passes out, successfully sued when he was turned down for a job as a
bus driver in Maryland. A subway employee in New York sued when he
was fired from a job that required him to crawl under trains and into
narrow passages; he weighed more than 400 pounds. A Kansas driver
sued when he was ticketed for not wearing a seat belt; he claimed it
violated his rights as a claustrophobe. A strip club in Bellevue,
Washington was sued because it did not have a lift that would allow
women in wheel chairs to do erotic dancing on the stage. Students who
are penalized when late for tests and class are suing all over, on
grounds that they suffer from a narcolepsy disability. Almost anyone
with "depression" can also get recognized as disabled.
Obesity, alcoholism, and addiction can all be considered disabilities.
A Michigan jury granted $610,000 to an employee who fell asleep on
the job, on grounds that narcolepsy is a disability. Courts have
ruled that potential employees have the "right to lie" about any
previous behavior that might represent manifestations of
"disabilities," including stealing. Truckloads of misbehavior are
protected because virtually all psychiatric problems get counted as
disabilities, and so even those engaged in insubordination with
superiors, disruptive behavior, and theft may enjoy protection.
Costs of course are also a matter that "Disabilities Protection" laws
generally disregard and insist be ignored. In many places, every
single person incapable of boarding a bus or train could be
transported at public expense by taxi for a tiny fraction of what it
costs to implement all those lifts and special assistance devices on
vehicles, not taking into account the capacity of the vehicle lost
because of their space.
There are also other implications to this. Once pedophiles and the
other misfits and perverts have been added by Greece and others to the
list of the "disabled," those who engage in violence towards them or
mere criticism, mocking, or denunciations of such people could find
themselves prosecuted as perpetrators of hate crimes. A minor ruckus
arose two years back in the US when TV commentator Bill O'Reilly
predicted that someday those who attack pedophiles will be prosecuted
for hate crimes. Pedophilia is not a recognized disability under the
Americans with Disabilities Act. Yet. Neither is being a
"transgendered" person, although there is a lot of lobbying to get its
exclusion from "disability" status dropped.
Where will it all end? Perhaps when taxpaying is recognized as a
symptom of mental illness and so all who agree to pay their taxes get
an automatic disabilities discharge from paying them.

PC on Steroids - Just when you thought the PC-people could not possibly Get any Nuttier

2012-01-10T07:19:00.001-08:00

PC on Steroids - Just when you thought the PC-people could not
possibly Get any Nuttier

Furor in Greece over pedophilia as a disability
January 9th, 2012 in Health

(AP) -- Greek disability groups expressed anger Monday at a government
decision to expand a list of state-recognized disability categories to
include pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs.

The National Confederation of Disabled People called the action
"incomprehensible," and said pedophiles are now awarded a higher
government disability pay than some people who have received organ
transplants.

The Labor Ministry said categories added to the expanded list - that
also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and
sadomasochists - were included for purposes of medical assessment and
used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance.

But NCDP leader Yiannis Vardakastanis, who is blind, warned the new
list could create new difficulties for disabled Greeks who are already
facing benefit cuts due to the country's financial crisis.

"What's happened is incomprehensible. I think there is some big
mistake. The ministry should have a different policy on disability,"
Vardakastanis told the Associated Press. "The list contains major
changes to disability quotients, which could effectively remove many
people from access to benefits."

The new list gives pyromaniacs and pedophiles disability pay up to 35
percent, compared to 80 percent for heart transplant recipients.

"It's really not serious to grant Peeping Toms a 20-30 percent
disability rate, and 10 percent to diabetics, who have insulin shots
four or five times a day," said Vardakastanis.

Greece has been fighting to avoid bankruptcy since 2009. Public
spending on health and welfare programs has been sharply cut under
austerity measures imposed as a condition for receiving emergency
loans from the International Monetary Fund and other countries using
the euro currency.

Independently run welfare programs that survived on state grants have
been the hardest hit, leaving some disabled groups, including the
deaf, facing sudden drops in their standard of care.

The government is also battling widespread abuse in the welfare
system, forcing tens of thousands of disabled people to be reassessed.

©2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Lessons from Central Asia

2012-01-10T07:02:00.001-08:00

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/10/central-asia-lessons-for-the-middle-east/

Central Asia: Lessons for the Middle East

Posted By Nodir Ataev and Steven Plaut On January 10, 2012

Just as the new calendar year was about to begin, new violence broke
out in the village of Andarak in southern Kyrgyzstan. Internecine
violence among the ethnic groups of Kyrgyzstan has been flaring up
periodically for years with the worst outbreaks in 2010. Kyrgyzstan
may be the closest thing to be found in Central Asia to a "bi-national
state," the sort of state that some are proposing be imposed upon the
Middle East as a "solution" to replace Israel. It is the second
poorest of the ex-Soviet republics. The two main ethnic groups in
Kyrgyzstan are the Kyrgyz, about 70% of the population, until
relatively recently in history a nomadic tribal population, and ethnic
Uzbeks, close to 20%. There are also ethnic Tajiks living in the
country. And there are lessons to learn from the violence there about
the viability of multi-ethnic states in the Middle East.

At first glance, Kyrgyzstani ethnic relations might be expected to be
idyllic. Both of the two main population groups consist of
predominantly Moslem people speaking Turkic dialects. The Tajiks are
also Moslem, speaking a language close to Farsi. Yet the country has
seen outbreaks of massive inter-ethnic violence. In June 1990, a
violent land dispute between the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks erupted in the city
of Osh. In the summer of 2010, southern Kyrgyzstan was again gripped
by bloody internecine violence. (The New Year's violence this year was
between ethnic Tajiks and Kyrgyz.)

The south of Kyrgyzstan is predominantly Uzbek and was sliced off and
glued into Kyrgyzstan by the Soviets in order to provide the country
with parts of the fertile Fergana Valley. In the 1990 fighting, a
state of emergency and curfew were introduced there and the border
between the neighboring Uzbekistani and Kirghiz republics was closed.
Soviet troops were deployed to stop the violence. According to
official reports 230 people died, but unofficial figures range up to
more than 1,000.

Central Asia is a part of the globe that is known by few Americans,
with even fewer who have visited it. It is composed of countries that
almost no American can identify on a map. Yet it is nevertheless an
important region, located just north of Afghanistan and near the
heartland of the forces of the anti-Western jihad, a region whose
strategic worth is increasingly valued by the West in light of the war
against terror. And it is also a region in which there are lessons
for other parts of the world with regard to "engineering" artificial
states. In particular, it illustrates the folly of proposals to
construct "bi-national" and "multi-national" states in the Middle East
as some sort of recipe for peace.

Throughout history and until very recently, Central Asians lived
within the greater states and empires of other peoples, among them the
empires of the Chinese, Mongols, Greeks, Arabs, Persians, Turks and
Russians. Most of Central Asia was conquered by Alexander the Great
and so was opened up to "Western-Hellenistic" cultural influence quite
early. Later the region was incorporated within a series of Islamic
states, khanates, and empires, including those of Islamized Mongols.
Most of the population was Islamized, although at different paces,
with those today called Uzbeks being among the earliest to embrace the
faith, and those called the Kyrgyz and Kazakhs converting much later,
many only in the last two centuries. Historically the population of
the region did not see itself as composed of separate "nations," but
rather as heterogeneous cultural and linguistic subgroups and clans
within those larger empires, and where religious and tribal ties were
far more important than "national" ties.

The nature of statehood and nationality in Central Asia was radically
and artificially altered by the Soviets, who sought to neutralize the
political ambitions and independence of the peoples of the region
through a policy of divide and conquer. The Soviets also decided to
erect boundaries for "Socialist Republics" and similar political
structures (like "autonomous oblasts") throughout the region. Stalin
and his people intentionally drew "national" boundaries for these new
"nations" that often ignored demography and the ethnic compositions of
the populations. They drew borders in an intentional way to include
large populations of "alien" peoples in each of the new "republics"
being invented. For example, two of Uzbekistan's largest cities are
in fact ethnically Tajik.

The Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and many others were all
interspersed throughout the territories of the "republics" in a
dizzying mosaic. Cynics suspected that the Soviets wanted such
structures to prevent ethnic-based opposition from forming, to focus
attention of the ethnic groups in conflict against one another so that
their populations would be easier to control, and to foment
Russification. The languages of these new "countries" were forcibly
and artificially transformed by requiring the use of the Cyrillic
(Russian) alphabet, although in recent years Cyrillic is being widely
replaced by the Latin alphabet. Stalinist policies of mass expulsion
of populations brought other ethnicities and other tensions to Central
Asia alongside uprooted populations from the Crimea and Georgia and
elsewhere transplanted there.

Every one of the "republics" of Central Asia sits inside artificial
borders arbitrarily drawn by the Soviets, each a sovereign
authoritarian country; Uzbekistan has retained even today its
one-party Soviet-era dictatorship. Ethnic tensions are to be found in
all the countries of Central Asia, and these sometimes produce massive
violence.

According to the United Nations, in the 2010 violence 400,000 refugees
were displaced and over 100,000 people, mainly ethnic Uzbeks, fled
across the border to neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The
Kyrgyzstani interim government headed by acting president Roza
Otunbayeva was accused of granting shoot-to-kill powers to its
security forces in the south, and was criticized by human rights
organizations. Human Rights Watch reported some involvement of
government forces in attacks on Uzbek neighborhoods.

There are several lessons that can be learned from the violence in
Kyrgyzstan. As a predominantly Moslem country Kyrgyzstan is very much
a part of the Middle East. As such, the first lesson is that in the
Middle East, bi-national and multi-national political structures do
not work well, even under the best of circumstances, and produce
inter-communal and internecine violence. Multi-ethnic Tajikistan has
also seen civil war break out among different Muslim groups in that
country. If relations among the fellow Turkic Muslims of rival ethnic
groups break down into near-civil war, then how much less viable would
be any bi-national Jewish-Arab state of the sort that the
Destroy-Israel movement is currently proposing?

Ironically, there is a related positive lesson for the Middle East
from the same region. While relations between ethnic Slavs and local
Muslims in Central Asia have often been tense and can be potentially
explosive, recent violent confrontations have been relatively rare
largely because of the massive out-migration of the Slavs to Russia
and the Ukraine. Ethnic Germans also largely emigrated. Ethnic
Russians and Ukrainians simply moved to those nation-states in which
their kin are the dominant majority.

Could not the Arab-Israeli conflict be resolved at least partly
through a similar out-migration of "Palestinians" and their relocation
into the predominantly Arab ethnic "homelands," much like the
resettlement of Central Asian Slavs? After all, "Palestinians" are by
and large people whose families migrated into what is now Israel from
neighboring countries over the past century or so, to take advantage
of rising standards of living produced by the Zionist immigrations and
investments of capital there. And Palestinian Arabs are the only
ethnic group on the planet that can choose to move to any from among
22 different sister states composed of the same ethnic group to which
they belong.

Confrontation and civil war with Slavs have been prevented in Central
Asia thanks to "transfer" of the minority Slav population to the
predominantly Slavic countries. "Transfer" has long been the bogeyman
solution that defenders of the Palestinian agenda dismiss as a racist
and colonialist idea. They prefer the "progressive" solution of
annihilating Israel and its population and erecting even more Arab
states in its territory. The same people who want Israel dismembered
reject out of hand the idea that Iraq or Syria could be made into more
tranquil places by breaking them each into smaller states with more
homogeneous populations. After all, that would be "colonialistic,"
unlike Soviet border invention.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Only HALF Pusillanimous

2012-01-09T03:58:00.001-08:00

Israel is in the midst of a major scandal, one all the media are
speaking about. It seems that the head of the soccer association was
appointing biased judges and referees to soccer matches. He is being
indicted. Those "conscripted" game judges would make calls during the
game that reflected their personal bias. See this news story:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/sports/soccer-law-and-order-match-fixing-scandal-comes-roaring-back-1.406244

Now I mention this because it is in the headlines today exactly 24
hours after the appointment of OTHER biased judges in Israel – to the
Israeli Supreme Court. None of the same newspapers screaming in
outrage at the appointment of biased judges to referee soccer games is
also screaming against the appointment of biased judges to Israel's
Supreme Court. After all, the newspapers and most Israelis treat
soccer as an institution deserving of respect and honor! One in which
they expect fairness and integrity.

The head of the soccer association accused of making the biased
appointments is being indicted. The people involved in the
appointments of biased judges to the Supreme Court are not.

The Netanyahu people are patting themselves on the back for their
role of courage and integrity in the latest batch of Supreme Court
appointees. (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/four-new-israeli-supreme-court-justices-named-after-compromise-1.406029
) Of the four new justices, ONLY TWO are far-leftist anti-democratic
promoters of "judicial activism." The courage and integrity of the
government is manifested in the fact that not all four are. Judicial
activism is the doctrine that holds that it is the job of unelected
judges to serve as political mentors and nannies to us unwashed voters
and to educate us in the great enlightened and progressive ideas we
are too ignorant to appreciate on our own, by imposing those ideas
upon us in their rulings. The enlightened and progressive ideas they
seek to impose upon us invariably reflect the political agenda of the
Left, and range from affirmative action quotas to "rights" for
terrorist murderers to gay marriage to micro-kibitzing in the
decisions of the military in order to force it to toe leftist
ideology. And of course defending the position that freedom of speech
needs to be protected only for Arabs and leftist Jews.

The worst of the new appointees is Daphne Barak-Erez, dean of the
School of Law at Tel Aviv University, long a bastion of tenured
leftism. She is a passionate believer in "judicial activism." Her
appointment is already arousing squeals of delight from the tenured
Left. Naomi Hazan, the Madame Defarge of the New Israel Fund, issued
a rousing squeal of support for Barak-Erez. She and Zvi Zylbertal
from the Jerusalem District Court are the appointees of the "Beinisch
Clique" in this supposed grand historic "compromise." Of the two
non-leftists, one is an actual conservative, Noam Sohlberg, whom the
Left has been trying in recent weeks to "Bork." Sohlberg is
ideologically to the Right and lives on the correct side of the Green
Line (meaning outside Israel's 1967 borders). Showing their great
belief in democracy, some radical leftists petitioned Beinisch and the
Supreme Court to block Sohlberg's appointment on grounds that he is a
"settler," but their petition was rejected. I sure would like to see
what the media would say if someone were to petition the court to
block Barak-Erez's appointment on grounds that she lives in the
leftist suburb of Ramat Aviv, or to block someone else on grounds that
he or she lives on a kibbutz.

So when "only" half the appointees are leftist "judicial
activists," this represents a grand compromise? How about this for a
different alternative grand compromise: all of the judicial activists
in Israel are dismissed from the bench but as a compromise they are
NOT prosecuted and indicted for their misbehavior on the bench.

Israelis can comfort themselves with the thought that in THIS
instance, Netanyahu and his team were only half pusillanimous. And
only capitulated to half of the Left's agenda.

Only with Jews

2012-01-07T09:21:00.001-08:00

This is not a political item and is not related to current events.
But every once in a while there is a human interest story that can
only be about Jews and just leaves you in awe at the Jewish
experience, a story so incredible it can only be true.

Yakov Jacobson was a completely assimilated Jew in the US. From his
name he is probably a recent immigrant from the ex-Soviet Union. He
was working in a shopping mall as the mall Santa, dressed up in
complete Santa uniform. A couple of Jews wandered in, evidently from
Chabad, and were chatting with him. Hearing his name, they realized
he was Jewish. They asked him if he would like to put on tefillin.
Tefillin, he asked, what's that? So they explained it to him.

And so, dressed in his Santa suit, for the very first time in his
life, Yakov put on tefillin. You can see the picture of him doing so
here: http://www.israpreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/tefilin-santa-2.jpg

According to the israpreneur web site, this is a true story.

Rain Man

2012-01-06T02:58:00.001-08:00

It is raining this week in Israel, which is an unusual event. I was
outside yesterday when a light rain was falling, not enough even to
make cars turn on their wipers. A bunch of Israelis were crowded
under a store's outside awning to shelter there and to wait until the
"storm" passed. It reminded me of this earlier item I had posted
about life in Israel:

Rain Man

By Steve Plaut

This week it rained pretty hard in Israel. Not enough to really
fix the Sea of Galilee and the water deficit. The authorities say
Israel would have to have 133 days just as rainy to fill up the Sea.

But it did get me thinking, and I thought I would share my thoughts
with you about Israelis and rain. Israelis invented the disk-on-key
(memory stick), invent cures for cancer, and Israeli components were
on the rocket that landed on the moon. But Israelis simply do not
understand rain.

I suppose it is all pretty understandable. After all, rain is a
very unusual event in Israel, so Israelis have never quite figured out
how to cope with it. In the monsoons, it may rain in an hour in East
Asia more than it rains in Israel in a year.

First of all, Israelis are convinced that going out in the rain
is lethal. Humans melt in the rain. Especially children. And it
does not have to be very hard rain either. It is highly common to hear
Israelis saying things like, "I need to go to the post office but I
can't go because it is drizzling." Postmen by the way stop
delivering the mail when it rains. Katyusha rockets just make loud
noises, but Israelis are convinced that a bit of precipitation will
kill you for sure.

At the first drops of rain, Israeli streets empty out. Thunder
is so unusual that Judaism has invented a special blessing one says
when one hears it. Winters in Israel are so mild that typical daytime
temps in January and February are in the 60s and 70s (Fahrenheit).
(There is a math prof at my university who has taught for 40 years and
has yet to come to campus wearing long pants or shoes.) When the wind
blows together with rain, Israelis are convinced that the Angel of
Death is stalking the country. I once left my building on campus up
in the Carmel hills when the temperature was 50 degrees F and the wind
was blowing. While waiting for the bus, all the Israelis around me
were complaining and screaming that Israel had morphed into Siberia.
A couple of Russian Israelis from Siberia stood nearby and fell on the
floor laughing.

Because rain is so unusual, Israelis do not know how to drive in
it. If a car's wheels spin when the traffic light turns green
because the street is wet, Israelis believe that you have to gun the
gas pedal to make them spin faster until they move you out of the spot
with poor traction in which you are stuck. Israelis have no
experience with ice on roads and do not recognize the feeling of a car
skidding. So on the occasion
when they do come across a slippery road, they do not even notice the car
wheels skidding about.

Israelis also have never figured out that hats keep rain
off your face and head. Their major fear in rain seems to be that the
hat could get wet. Religious Israelis always wear hats, but they
cover their hats with plastic covers in the rain so the hat will not
get wet and so the rain flows down the plastic into their faces. For
ultra-Orthodox Israelis, defying the weather is an article of piety
and pride. That is why, when it is 112 degrees F outside in the shade
in August, the Ultra-Orthodox will show their contempt for meteorology
by wearing winter coats. It is best not to sit next to a black-coated
fellow on a bus in the summer with the windows closed.

Part of the Israeli problem with rain is manifested also in the
Israeli dread of eating ice cream in winter. Israelis are universally
and passionately convinced that if you eat ice cream in the winter,
you will get a throat infection and die a horrible death. The
infection, by the way, is caused by the calendar month, so you will
get it if you eat ice cream in January even if it is 80 degrees F
outside. I once sat on a bench in winter eating ice cream, and the
people walking by kept coming up to me to ask if I had gotten a
special inoculation against throat infections that winter. Israelis
who own dogs always make the dog wear wool sweaters when they go out
into the rain in 50 degree F evenings, so the dog will not freeze to
death.

Bibi Netanyahu probably eats ice cream in winter, but that
is because he spent part of his youth living in the US. No other
Israeli cabinet minister has ever endangered himself and tempted fate
by eating ice cream in the winter.

For a while, Israel was unique in the world because Israeli
supermarkets were marketing something they called "winter ice cream."
No one anywhere else on earth has heard of such a thing. Winter ice
cream is slightly softer than regular ice cream, and the idea was to
convince Israelis that it was not as cold as regular ice cream (never
mind that it was stored in the same freezer), so they could eat it
without risking immediate agonizing death. But it never caught on, I
guess because Israelis preferred not to tempt the Angel of Death.

The other thing is that no Israeli in history has ever written in
his or her "personal ad" that he or she likes to go for long romantic
walks in the rain. And if you want to date an Israeli, never write
that in YOUR own "personal ad." Israelis believe that walks in the
rain will kill you. While we are at it, you should also never write
that you eat ice cream in winter.

And if Israelis do not understand rain, they have even MORE
problems understanding snow. Granted that snow is highly unusual in
this part of the world, Christmas manger scenes notwithstanding.
Jerusalem usually gets snow once or twice a year. Safed can also get
snow, as can the Golan.

Israelis do not understand snow. A snow storm instantly binds
together all the North Americans and Russian Israelis, who get
together in fraternal bliss and make fun of the sabras, while doubling
over in laughter. First of all, Israelis always carry umbrellas in
the snow, so the flakes will not damage their hats and their hair.
Second, they usually tie large plastic garbage bags around their shoes
so that the snow will not touch the leather or plastic and destroy it.
And it goes without saying that swallowing a snow flake will kill you
on the spot

Israelis do not understand rain and snow. But they also do not
understand elevators. Every single Israeli believes that if you are
standing on the ground floor and want to go up to the tenth floor,
then you need to press the DOWN button so that the elevator will know
that it should come DOWN to get you and take you up. Israelis are
more convinced that this is how elevators work than they are that the
sun will rise tomorrow. I tried a few times to explain to Israelis
who had pushed the down button in order to go up that they had pressed
the wrong one. Hearing my heavy American accent, they would jab one
another in the ribs with their elbows and make comments about how
simpleminded and naive those Americans are.

In some cases, pushing the wrong elevator button compulsively has
its advantages. I am convinced that many a plot by terrorists to
assassinate Israelis in large buildings has been foiled because the
Israelis escaped the gunmen by pressing the wrong elevator button.
You may recall that there was one successful assassination by
terrorists of an Israeli cabinet minister, Rehavam "Ghandi" Zeevi, in
a Jerusalem hotel. I have investigated the incident and, alas, the
poor man was killed because he accidentally pressed the correct
elevator button.

***

Christmas was a few days ago, which in Israel is pretty much just
an ordinary work day. But it did bring back to my mind some things
from my childhood in Philadelphia. When I was nine years old, the
week before Christmas I was sitting in the barber chair in the
neighborhood, getting my bi-weekly crew cut, when in came a guy
dressed as Santa Claus. He started handing out lollipops to all the
kids sitting in the row of barber chairs having their hair cut. When
he got to me, I was a little shy and hesitant. I said to "Santa,"
listen, I am not sure if it ok for me to take a Christmas lollipop
from you because I am Jewish. The Santa guy came up to me close and
winked and said, "That's ok, so am I!!"

The Supreme Need to Fix the Israeli Supreme Court

2012-01-05T10:15:00.001-08:00

The Supreme Need to Fix the Israeli Supreme Court

By Steven Plaut

For years I have been claiming that Israel has a politicized dual
justice system, where one set of rules operates for leftists and
another for everyone else. For years I have been insisting that the
Prosecution or Attorney General's Office in Israel is partisan and
politicized and biased.

But Neeman is going further than that. To explain what he has been
doing, you need to understand the structure of Israel's judicial
system. For many years it has been subordinated to the
anti-democratic doctrines of "judicial activism" promoted by the
radical Left. This doctrine holds that leftist judges should be
allowed to dictate governmental policy in all things, and just make up
the rules and laws as they go along, in ways that appeal to the Left.

Israeli anti-democratic judges insist that non-elected judges
have the right to dictate decisions to the elected representatives of
the people, to overturn and veto laws passed by the representatives of
the people, and simply to invent imaginary mandates and "rights" that
must be upheld, even when the parliament refuses to approve them.
These days, the cult of judicial tyranny is known as the "Beinisch
Clique," named after the current leftist Chief Justice of the Israeli
Supreme Court, Dorit Beinisch. She has never hidden her leftist
political agenda nor her devotion to "judicial activism."

However the more proper name for this cult of anti-democratic
judicial tyranny is the "Aharon Barak Clique," because all of its
members are groupies and followers of the previous Chief Justice,
Barak.

Israeli judges are selected by a panel or commission for the
selection of judges, in which sitting judges are the dominant force
and the majority of the panel. So, in effect, the unelected judicial
elite gets to perpetuate its powers of control over the judiciary by
selecting other new judges who toe its ideological line. And the
appointees cannot be impeached and removed, except by the same panel
(and it never does so). This is why the Far Left has continued to
control Israel's Supreme Court and many of its other courts even
during the decades in which the Likud and the "Right" were nominally
in power.

There have been initiatives in the past few weeks to change that.
First, a law was just passed that cancels the requirement that the
Chief Justice must be a sitting Supreme Court judge for at least three
years. The proposal was designed to allow Judge Asher Gronis to serve
as Chief Justice. Known as the "Gronis bill," it serves to revoke the
three-year requirement that was passed by a previous government as
part of ITS own Byzantine machinations to block someone else from
being Chief Justice at that time. Gronis is an intelligent and
moderate person (ideologically) who rejects judicial activism. And
that is why the Left is hysterical over the "Gronis Bill," claiming it
is a fascist assault against democracy. In reality, what really has
them upset is that the hegemony of the Far Left over the court will be
weakened with Gronis as Chief Justice. This is "anti-democratic" only
if you believe the government elected by the people of Israel should
never undo or challenge the leftist hegemony over the court being
exercised by those NOT elected by the people of Israel.

In addition, a bill stands before the Knesset that would change
the composition of the panel that selects the judges, increasing the
weight of the non-leftists there. In particular it would appoint two
more reps who explicitly reject the judicial activism of the Left and
who are NOT associated with the Beinisch Clique, which until now has
dominated the panel.

But there is now a new problem. Every time the Likud is in a
position to exercise some power as the elected government and to
challenge the hegemony of the Left, Bibi Netanyahu gets a bad case of
frigid feet and spaghetti vertebrae. Netanyahu's legacy as Prime
Minister will best be remembered as one of cowardice and capitulation.
Bibi thinks that if he vetoes and blocks every single initiative by
the Right to rein in the Left, then the leftist media will like him
and pander to him.

Netanyahu's first fete of cowardice was when he failed to
re-appoint Prof. Daniel Friedmann to a new term as Minister of
Justice. Friedmann had been leading the charge against judicial
activism under the previous government. Later Netanyahu vetoed at the
last minute the initiative to require transparency with regard to the
foreign funding of hostile anti-Israel extremist NGOs operating in
Israel. And now he has just come out AGAINST the initiative to change
the composition of the panel for selection of judges. Ending the
hegemony of the Left and of the unelected anti-democratic Beinisch
Clique over the selection of judges is suddenly "undemocratic," opines
Netanyahu. The irony, of course, is that the countless displays of
cowardice by Bibi never gain him any sympathy from the
leftist-controlled media, which continue to demonize him and crusade
against the Likud.

Meanwhile, Neeman is getting more and more outspoken about other
things as well, just as Bibi gets more and more pusillanimous. Neeman
is now cited in the Israeli media as comparing Haaretz, the
far-leftist anti-Zionist Israeli daily, to Der Sturmer, the German
Nazi newspaper of the 1930s. Yes, Virginia, the Minister of Justice
dared to use a Holocaust-era image in political discourse. I mention
this because, as you know, several anti-democratic judges ruled in the
Gordon harassment SLAPP suit against me that the use of Holocaust era
rhetoric and images is prohibited speech in Israel and constitutes
libel when used in political criticism by conservative critics of
leftist traitors. Such rhetoric is of course perfectly permitted for
everyone else. So if, for example, you say that a traitor is a
"Judenrat wannabe" when that person serves as an accomplice to
terrorists after illegally entering Ramallah to act as a human shield
to interfere with Israeli military actions, you would be considered to
have committed defamation. Calling for the mass murder of the
Orthodox or of Israeli non-leftists would however be protected speech.
So Neeman's comments illustrate once again that Israel's judiciary,
all the way up to its Supreme Court, are anti-democratic opponents of
freedom of speech for non-leftists.

The leftist media are opening up with all guns against Neeman and
against anyone else who seeks to challenge the leftist hegemony over
the courts. A petition against the Gronis Law signed by many of
Israel's worst tenured Leftists appears in this week's newspapers.
While Haaretz smears Neeman, it cheers the return to the Supreme Court
of the leftist judge Yoram Danziger, who had been suspended from
sitting on the bench for a few weeks due to his myriad corrupt and
dirty ties to the most corrupt and dirty municipal politician in
Israel. The problem of course is that the leftist Danziger was
investigated by the very same partisan leftist Prosecutor's Office in
Israel that is the focus of Neeman's denunciations now. And that
office just could not find even a smidgen of illegal or unethical
activity on the part of Danizger. Actually, I suspect that the ONLY
people in Israel who are NOT aware of Danziger's dirt are the people
who work for the Attorney General.

So Danziger has been reseated on the Supreme Court bench. This
is the same Danziger who ruled a few months back that the lying
propaganda movie "Jenin Jenin," smearing Israeli troops as having
committed mass murders in Jenin, is not slander. The producer of that
movie, Mohammed Bakri, himself admitted that his movie is a tissue of
defamatory lies. But Danziger ruled it is not libelous. Was
Danziger's return now to the bench his political payoff for that
ruling?

Oh, Haaretz by the way has a new cosmic cause that has made it
upset. It seems that the Military Rabbinate, the rabbis who serve in
the military, distributed some brochures with a photo of the Temple
Mount, showing it without the presence of the mosques, which were
completely erased. The Western Wall and its plaza are in the photo,
but no mosques. Haaretz is incensed. Racism! Incitement! You would
need to read the small print of the news report to see that the
brochure in question was actually about the Hasmonean Temple Mount and
how it looked during the period of the battles of the Maccabis against
the Greeks, celebrated in Hannuka. And I know it is Islamophobic
incitement to say so, but there were no mosques on the Temple Mount
back then!

The Supreme Need to Fix the Israeli Supreme Court

2012-01-05T10:12:00.001-08:00

The Supreme Need to Fix the Israeli Supreme Court

For years I have been claiming that Israel has a politicized dual justice system, where one set of rules operates for leftists and another for everyone else. For years I have been insisting that the Prosecution or Attorney General's Office in Israel is partisan and politicized and biased.

I of course have not been the only person saying such things. But now such accusations carry new weight because very similar comments to my own are being made this week by … (drumroll) … Israel's Minister of Justice, Yaakov Neeman. Neeman is lashing out against the Attorney General for the latter's bias and arbitrary partisanship in prosecution. See this report: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/sources-israeli-justice-minister-accuses-state-prosecutor-of-indicting-too-quickly-1.405502

But Neeman is going further than that. To explain what he has been doing, you need to understand the structure of Israel's judicial system. For many years it has been subordinated to the anti-democratic doctrines of "judicial activism" promoted by the radical Left. This doctrine holds that leftist judges should be allowed to dictate governmental policy in all things, and just make up the rules and laws as they go along, in ways that appeal to the Left.

Israeli anti-democratic judges insist that non-elected judges have the right to dictate decisions to the elected representatives of the people, to overturn and veto laws passed by the representatives of the people, and simply to invent imaginary mandates and "rights" that must be upheld, even when the parliament refuses to approve them. These days, the cult of judicial tyranny is known as the "Beinisch Clique," named after the current leftist Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, Dorit Beinisch. She has never hidden her leftist political agenda nor her devotion to "judicial activism."

However the more proper name for this cult of anti-democratic judicial tyranny is the "Aharon Barak Clique," because all of its members are groupies and followers of the previous Chief Justice, Barak.

Israeli judges are selected by a panel or commission for the selection of judges, in which sitting judges are the dominant force and the majority of the panel. So, in effect, the unelected judicial elite gets to perpetuate its powers of control over the judiciary by selecting other new judges who toe its ideological line. And the appointees cannot be impeached and removed, except by the same panel (and it never does so). This is why the Far Left has continued to control Israel's Supreme Court and many of its other courts even during the decades in which the Likud and the "Right" were nominally in power.

There have been initiatives in the past few weeks to change that. First, a law was just passed that cancels the requirement that the Chief Justice must be a sitting Supreme Court judge for at least three years. The proposal was designed to allow Judge Asher Gronis to serve as Chief Justice. Known as the "Gronis bill," it serves to revoke the three-year requirement that was passed by a previous government as part of ITS own Byzantine machinations to block someone else from being Chief Justice at that time. Gronis is an intelligent and moderate person (ideologically) who rejects judicial activism. And that is why the Left is hysterical over the "Gronis Bill," claiming it is a fascist assault against democracy. In reality, what really has them upset is that the hegemony of the Far Left over the court will be weakened with Gronis as Chief Justice. This is "anti-democratic" only if you believe the government elected by the people of Israel should never undo or challenge the leftist hegemony over the court being exercised by those NOT elected by the people of Israel.

In addition, a bill stands before the Knesset that would change the composition of the panel that selects the judges, increasing the weight of the non-leftists there. In particular it would appoint two more reps who explicitly reject the judicial activism of the Left and who are NOT associated with the Beinisch Clique, which until now has dominated the panel.

But there is now a new problem. Every time the Likud is in a position to exercise some power as the elected government and to challenge the hegemony of the Left, Bibi Netanyahu gets a bad case of frigid feet and spaghetti vertebrae. Netanyahu's legacy as Prime Minister will best be remembered as one of cowardice and capitulation. Bibi thinks that if he vetoes and blocks every single initiative by the Right to rein in the Left, then the leftist media will like him and pander to him.

Netanyahu's first fete of cowardice was when he failed to re-appoint Prof. Daniel Friedmann to a new term as Minister of Justice. Friedmann had been leading the charge against judicial activism under the previous government. Later Netanyahu vetoed at the last minute the initiative to require transparency with regard to the foreign funding of hostile anti-Israel extremist NGOs operating in Israel. And now he has just come out AGAINST the initiative to change the composition of the panel for selection of judges. Ending the hegemony of the Left and of the unelected anti-democratic Beinisch Clique over the selection of judges is suddenly "undemocratic," opines Netanyahu. The irony, of course, is that the countless displays of cowardice by Bibi never gain him any sympathy from the leftist-controlled media, which continue to demonize him and crusade against the Likud.

Meanwhile, Neeman is getting more and more outspoken about other things as well, just as Bibi gets more and more pusillanimous. Neeman is now cited in the Israeli media as comparing Haaretz, the far-leftist anti-Zionist Israeli daily, to Der Sturmer, the German Nazi newspaper of the 1930s. Yes, Virginia, the Minister of Justice dared to use a Holocaust-era image in political discourse. I mention this because, as you know, several anti-democratic judges ruled in the Gordon harassment SLAPP suit against me that the use of Holocaust era rhetoric and images is prohibited speech in Israel and constitutes libel when used in political criticism by conservative critics of leftist traitors. Such rhetoric is of course perfectly permitted for everyone else. So if, for example, you say that a traitor is a "Judenrat wannabe" when that person serves as an accomplice to terrorists after illegally entering Ramallah to act as a human shield to interfere with Israeli military actions, you would be considered to have committed defamation. Calling for the mass murder of the Orthodox or of Israeli non-leftists would however be protected speech. So Neeman's comments illustrate once again that Israel's judiciary, all the way up to its Supreme Court, are anti-democratic opponents of freedom of speech for non-leftists.

The leftist media are opening up with all guns against Neeman and against anyone else who seeks to challenge the leftist hegemony over the courts. A petition against the Gronis Law signed by many of Israel's worst tenured Leftists appears in this week's newspapers. While Haaretz smears Neeman, it cheers the return to the Supreme Court of the leftist judge Yoram Danziger, who had been suspended from sitting on the bench for a few weeks due to his myriad corrupt and dirty ties to the most corrupt and dirty municipal politician in Israel. The problem of course is that the leftist Danziger was investigated by the very same partisan leftist Prosecutor's Office in Israel that is the focus of Neeman's denunciations now. And that office just could not find even a smidgen of illegal or unethical activity on the part of Danizger. Actually, I suspect that the ONLY people in Israel who are NOT aware of Danziger's dirt are the people who work for the Attorney General.

So Danziger has been reseated on the Supreme Court bench. This is the same Danziger who ruled a few months back that the lying propaganda movie "Jenin Jenin," smearing Israeli troops as having committed mass murders in Jenin, is not slander. The producer of that movie, Mohammed Bakri, himself admitted that his movie is a tissue of defamatory lies. But Danziger ruled it is not libelous. Was Danziger's return now to the bench his political payoff for that ruling?

Oh, Haaretz by the way has a new cosmic cause that has made it upset. It seems that the Military Rabbinate, the rabbis who serve in the military, distributed some brochures with a photo of the Temple Mount, showing it without the presence of the mosques, which were completely erased. The Western Wall and its plaza are in the photo, but no mosques. Haaretz is incensed. Racism! Incitement! You would need to read the small print of the news report to see that the brochure in question was actually about the Hasmonean Temple Mount and how it looked during the period of the battles of the Maccabis against the Greeks, celebrated in Hannuka. And I know it is Islamophobic incitement to say so, but there were no mosques on the Temple Mount back then!

The Ruckus over BGU's Tenured Tanzim Heats Up

2012-01-05T02:11:00.000-08:00

The ruckus over the anti-Israel indoctrination center pretending to be
an academic department at Ben Gurion "University" continues.

Yaakov Bergman, a prominent professor at the Hebrew University, has
joined the assault on the Tenured Tanzim who teach "politics" at Ben
Gurion Univerity. He published a response to Neve Gordon and Dani
Filc, the two most extremist Israel-hating faculty members in this
otherwise wall-to-wall anti-Israel far-leftist department. Gordon and
Filc have both served as department chairmen in that department and
both have also chaired the anti-Semitic organization "Physicians for
Human Rights." (Neither of course is a physician.) Gordon and Filc
defend in Haaretz their department serving as a one-sided Bash-Israel
propaganda center. After all, whine Gordon and Filc in their Haaretz
article, people who actually want an "ordinary" political science
department that engages in scholarly work and research can find those
at Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University. In contrast, they
insist, Ben Gurion "University" wanted a different sort of politics
department, one focused on "criticism," by which they mean Bash-Israel
pro-terror extremism plus a lot of Marxism. And ONLY that. There is
not a single non-leftist permitted to teach in that department. And
by the way there is no shortage of Marxists and radical leftists in
the political science departments at Hebrew University and Tel Aviv
University either. Gordon and Filc then cite one Avner De Shalit, who
teaches political science at Hebrew University, of approving of what
they are doing in politics at BGU, but of course neglect to mention
that De Shalit is himself a Marxist and far-leftist who has made a
career out of studying "environmental justice," meaning a Marxist take
on environmentalism (see http://www.deshalit.huji.ac.il/) .

Anyway, Bergman bashed Gordon and Filc (in Hebrew) and posted this
segment from the recent international panel report on the Gordon-Filc
"department":

3.5 Research
The committee feels that the research performance of the Department
can be improved considerably. [ A]n examination of faculty
publications raises concerns about the department's research. [ ]
While many books were published by good academic publishers, few books
in the materials presented to the committee were published by leading
university presses and none of the articles mentioned were published
by leading political science journals. [ ] In the original report,
which covered a five-year period, only a couple of articles of all
faculty members combined were published in leading political science
journals. [ ] The committee recommends, therefore, to strengthen the
overall research performance of the Department [ ].
http://www.che.org.il/download/files/Ben%20Gurion%20Report.pdf

Gordon and Filc then recruited some students from their own department
to write a letter cheering on what goes on in that department. But
guess what. Since the entire politics department at BGU engages in
Bash-Israel extremism, most of the students who sign up for courses in
that department are SEEKING Bash-Israel extremism and Marxist
gibberish. So OF COURSE they are great defenders of the Gordon-Filc
gang.

Then, Commentary Magazine adds its voice:

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/01/03/is-ben-gurion-polisci-department-biased/

IS Ben-Gurion PoliSci Department Biased?
Jonathan Neumann | @NeumannJ 01.03.2012 -

A recent report by an international committee appointed by Israel's
Council for Higher Education recommended that the Politics and
Government Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev be shut
down, should it fail to address the shortcomings outlined. In
particular, the department stands accused of allowing the faculty's
leftist political opinions and fondness for activism to affect the
curriculum and undermine the quality of its academic research, a
viewpoint apparently affirmed by students.
Faculty have responded that the committee is populated by extreme
rightists and set out to hurt the department. However, in an op-ed for
Haaretz entitled, ''Yes, Shut it Down!'' (perhaps unsurprisingly, it
is only available in Hebrew) Ze'ev Maoz, a professor at UC Davis and
the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center and a self-declared "proud man
of the left" (credentials here), revealed he had been tasked with
evaluating the department some nine years ago and came to the same
conclusions, also based solely on academic considerations.
Rather than confront the findings of this report (and, it seems, the
previous one), faculty have gone on the defensive. Meanwhile, Prof.
David Newman, a founder of the department and now a dean of the
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ben-Gurion, has paid it
little attention, instead engaging in a peripheral, if revealing,
personal conflict with Prof. Efraim Karsh, of King's College, London.
Prof. Karsh noted on the day of the publication of the report,
Newman's Jerusalem Post op-ed, instead of dealing with the committee's
findings, blasted the Knesset for its alleged attack on democracy in
seeking to restrict foreign funding of NGOs, to revise the system of
judicial appointments, etc. The article, though of course it does not
precisely confirm the concerns of the report, certainly does nothing
to mitigate them.
Following the harsh words from Karsh, Newman, in a subsequent
Jerusalem Post piece, inexplicably denounced his adversary for
committing "verbal terrorism" in resorting to Nazi metaphors – a feat
of which only Newman, of the two, is in fact guilty. Perhaps
recognizing the flimsiness of his defense (and compounding it), Newman
further implies that Karsh, having left Israel to teach in England, is
somehow less fit to comment on his native state – an odd espousal from
a man who himself has also spent much of the past few years in
England.
Back at Ben-Gurion, the political biases of the politics department
are well-documented. Indeed, though Prof. Newman should be lauded for
his efforts to combat the proposed academic boycott of Israel in the
UK, they do ring somewhat hollow when the chair of his own department
supports the boycott, a matter to which one would assume Newman would
urgently attend. Instead of ignoring the report, Prof. Newman and the
rest of the faculty should immediately correct the failings in their
departments. And if they fail to step up, the authorities should press
them to step down.

"Body Functions" and the Death of Academic Standards at Tel Aviv University

2012-01-04T06:20:00.000-08:00

http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20TAU%20-%20Chen%20Misgav%20-%20Describes%20Bodily%20Functions.htm

Tel Aviv University – Chen Misgav (Dept of Geography) Describes
"Bodily Functions" - and the Death of Academic Standards at TAU

Universities are traditionally places where new ideas are always
welcome. Once a theory or question is presented, academic research and
study of the subject matter at hand can provide evidence and
information to better mankind through understanding. Thus the academy
can find a cure for a disease or explains why some cultures are
enabled to advance. Sadly, this has been perverted over the last
several decades, where academic inquiry is replaced by one-sided
advocacy, often for loony things.

…

Along comes PhD student Chen Misgav from Tel Aviv University's
Geography department. Bear in mind that at many universities,
geography is not even regarded as a bona fide academic discipline. …
And what does Misgav do for research? As far as we can tell, he has a
great time trolling gay sex clubs in Tel Aviv where he can claim his
sexual recreational pursuits serve the dual purpose of getting him
"partnered up" as well as getting him an advanced degree and
fellowships to travel the University circuit abroad as well as in
Israel.
…
Misgav continues:

"My research focuses on people and spaces on the event itself – the
party and the interior halls and spaces of the club, where bodily
performances, drags, alcohol, sexual practices and music connects
(sic) together. My main aim on this research is to check how bodily
performances, gender and identity expressions define special spaces
inside the club's halls. I conducted many field observations in the
club and later on made some in-depth interviews with people who spent
time in this club, focusing especially on gay men and transgendered
(sic) women. … In my paper I discuss these different and unique
constructions of sexual identity and the role of bodily performances
and gender through the production of these heterotopias. I will show
the extent to which space plays an important role in the construction
of identity through body performances."
…
Chen insists that we all have to hear about his homosexuality, which
is then conflated by him into an attack against "Zionism" and the
Jewish state.

"Bodily Functions" and the Death of Academic Standards at Tel Aviv University

By Lee Kaplan, www.Isracampus.org.il
4/1/2012

Sadly, this has been perverted over the last several decades, where
academic inquiry is replaced by one-sided advocacy, often for loony
things. In the American university system this has led to an
educational Theater of the Absurd: More than one American college
introduced courses on "The Philosophy of Star Trek" and actually give
credit for them. Georgetown University is currently offering a similar
class centered around black rap singer Jay-Z (a high school dropout
who supports the racist BDS movement against Israel). Students today
may not know Shakespeare or the Classics, they may not be able to add
and subtract and they lack critical thinking skills, or even how to
read and write, but they can discuss Vulcan terminology or discuss
their latest run-ins with their "hoes" and "beotches." Israeli
universities are obsessed with copying their American counterparts and
places like Tel Aviv University are more than willing to show they can
be just as innovative.

Along comes PhD student Chen Misgav from Tel Aviv University's
Geography department. Bear in mind that at many universities,
geography is not even regarded as a bona fide academic discipline.
TAU's website explains its Geography department as being "a leader in
research and education in Geoinformatics, Urban Planning, Climatology
and Water Resources, Human and Historical Geography." The site
continues, "Our teaching and research are inherently interdisciplinary
and we seek to integrate the natural sciences, the humanities, and the
social sciences. We offer courses in a wide range of geographical
specializations at the undergraduate, graduate and PhD levels."

So just how is all this manifested? By doctoral student Chen Misgav
inventing a new field called "Queer Geography." He calls it that. So
does Tel Aviv University.

And what does Misgav do for research? As far as we can tell, he has a
great time trolling gay sex clubs in Tel Aviv where he can claim his
sexual recreational pursuits serve the dual purpose of getting him
"partnered up" as well as getting him an advanced degree and
fellowships to travel the University circuit abroad as well as in
Israel.

Here's a brief self-description of Misgav's "research" in a Tel Aviv
nightclub where gays and "transsexuals" come to "socialize":
…"I would like to present a research taken place in one of the most
well-known gay night clubs in Israel – the Oman 17 Club. In this club
takes place a party known as FFF party, which has been running from
the early 90's almost every Friday night, and became a famous name in
gay nightlife scene and for the gay community in Tel-Aviv. It runs
(sic) since 2004 based on the famous Oman 17 Club in Tel-Aviv that
attracts mixture of gays, lesbians, straights and transgendered (sic)
people. It probably became the most important going-out place for the
transgendered (sic) people and maybe the only place that mixed gay men
and transgendered (sic) women get together under one roof."

What fun! Sounds like serious scholarship to us!

Misgav continues:

"My research focuses on people and spaces on the event itself – the
party and the interior halls and spaces of the club, where bodily
performances, drags, alcohol, sexual practices and music connects
(sic) together. My main aim on this research is to check how bodily
performances, gender and identity expressions define special spaces
inside the club's halls. I conducted many field observations in the
club and later on made some in-depth interviews with people who spent
time in this club, focusing especially on gay men and transgendered
(sic) women. I found out that although there is not any official
separation between these two groups, each of them produces a kind of
what Foucault defined as 'heterotopy' in the space that helps to
create a 'room for ourselves' inside the main space. In my paper I
discuss these different and unique constructions of sexual identity
and the role of bodily performances and gender through the production
of these heterotopias. I will show the extent to which space plays an
important role in the construction of identity through body
performances."

Bodily performances? We sure hope he wipes himself afterwards and
washes his hands.

We suppose that, aside from toilet activity, "bodily performances"
means sexual activity. Were these "field observations" anything more
than sexual voyeurism on Misgav's part, or was he in fact also
engaging in those sex acts as part of his TAU "research?"

Chen explains that he is a member of groups affiliated with the
International Solidarity Movement, groups that usually have large
amount of anti-Semitic homosexuals in them, like Anarchists Against
the Wall (AATW) and Solidarity Against Fascism (which supports Arab
and Muslim Fascism against Jews).

The question is this: Is "Queer Geography" really just an
intellectualized way for "queers" like Misgav to generate homosexual
trysts while trying to capitalize on it with a university degree?

Chen insists that we all have to hear about his homosexuality, which
is then conflated by him into an attack against "Zionism" and the
Jewish state.

He states: "The gay community in Israel went through major changes
since the eighties of the 20th century and especially in the nineties.
The growing visibility of the community and its political achievements
contributed largely to the possibility and to the legitimacy of
research on 'queer' subjects. Forming a political gay identity stirred
a process of creating alternative knowledge about queer issues in
different disciplines, knowledge that arises from the gay life
experience and that reflects it In Israel, Tel Aviv–Jaffa became the
center of attraction for the gay population and since the end of the
eighties in the last century a gay community with identity, visibility
and political power started to form. In my researches (sic) I focused
on few scales of the space (sic) – from the city and the streets to
the gay venues as the night club and the spaces of the body."

Reading that seems to be stimulating some noisy gastro activity in my
own rear spaces.

Misgav's faculty mentor at TAU is Tovi Fenster, a notorious
anti-Israel professor associated with the anti-Israel "Bimkom" NGO.
She claims to have invented "Feminist Geography," whatever that is.
Fenster has also been active in the semi-Marxist Van Leer Institute.
She led a Geographical Union conference despite her earlier acts such
as signing a petition endorsing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions
campaign against Israel.

Fenster's Bimkom is one more NGO seeking Israel's elimination. It
specializes in lobbying for most of the Negev being turned into a
Bedouinstan state. Ariel Handel, another PhD candidate at TAU is
another kommissar of the Fenstergrad camp at Tel Aviv University.
Handel's pretension is researching time and space and he then seeks to
use his "understandings" of it to promote demonization of Israel,
leading to its elimination.

But the real disgrace here is that academic standards at Tel Aviv
University have clearly been flushed down with the other Chen Misgav
"bodily functions" in the little totalitarian republic of Fenstergrad
Geography there.

The Hebrew University's Model Student

2011-12-30T02:34:00.001-08:00

1. More News from Orwellistic Israel: Terrorist murderer wants to
Finish his BA; Model Hebrew University Student

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/149051

Freed Terrorist: I Want to Finish My University Degree
Hamas terrorist who directed the murders of two IDF soldiers: I don't
regret what I did. I want to finish the university degree I started.
By Elad Benari
First Publish: 10/25/2011, 6:09 AM

Hamas terrorists
Israel news photo: Flash 90
One of the 477 terrorists who were freed last week in exchange for
Gilad Shalit said on Monday that he has absolutely no regrets for what
he did.
Mohammed Sharatha directed the kidnapping and murders of IDF soldiers
Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon in 1989. Both soldiers were kidnapped by
Hamas terrorists as they were hitchhiking on their way back home from
their military bases.
Sasportas was kidnapped and murdered in February of 1989 and his body
was found three months later, in May. Saadon was murdered in May of
1989 but his body was not found until seven years later, in 1996.
Sharatha was captured by the IDF in Gaza shortly after Saadon's
murder. He was sentenced to three life sentences.
Interviewed by Israel's Channel 10 News just six days after his
release from prison and his return to Gaza, Sharatha said, "I did what
I did and I do not regret it."
Sharatha, who refused to cooperate with Israeli investigators and
reveal where Saadon's body had been buried, even after he was captured
and sentenced, said that the kidnapping and murder of the two soldiers
was a direct order from Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (who was
killed in an IDF air strike in 2004).
He explained why he refused to reveal the location of Saadon's body.
"Why did the enemy not show us the burial place of people whom we are
just now starting to look for? These are people who have been missing
since 1967," he said, adding: "Israel has secret prisons where there
are detainees whose identity is unknown."
Sharatha said that his one request of Israel now that he has been
released is to be allowed to finish the university degree from the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which he began while in prison.
Allowing terrorist prisoners to study while in prison is just one of
many benefits given to them by Israel. In comparison, Gilad Shalit
spent five and a half years in Hamas captivity and was not allowed one
single visit from the International Red Cross.
At the end of the interview, Sharatha encouraged future terrorists who
will commit murderous acts towards Israelis.
"They have a great experience and greater power, and their fighting
spirit is greater than ours," he said. "We are proud to have created a
generation that will continue with the battle and go further, and
Allah willing they will achieve victory."

(Seems he was not accepted to Ben Gurion University's Politics
department because he was not anti-Israel enough for them!!)

2. The Boyfriend of Tali Fahima (Israeli Left's Poster Girl) re-arrested:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/151225
Top Terrorist Turns Himself In after Pardon Cancelled
Fatah terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi turns himself in after the IDF cancels
his pardon.
By Gil Ronen & Elad Benari
First Publish: 12/29/2011, 8:42 PM / Last Update: 12/29/2011, 11:33 PM

Jenin
Israel news photo: Flash 90
Zakaria Zubeidi, the former Fatah leader in Jenin, turned himself to
the Palestinian Authority on Thursday evening.
Earlier, Zubeidi told the Ma'an news agency that Israel had canceled
his pardon and instructed him to hand himself in to the Palestinian
Authority (PA).
Zubeidi, who headed the Al-Aqsa Brigades during the murderous terror
war launched by the PLO in 2000, told the PA-based news agency he had
stuck to all the conditions of the amnesty deal granted him by Israel
three years ago.
However, he said, Israel informed PA security forces on Thursday that
Zubeidi's pardon had been revoked, and that Israeli forces would
detain him if he did not turn himself in.
Zubeidi was admired by an Israeli woman, Tali Fahima, who crossed the
lines to accompany him when he was wanted by the IDF. Fahima, who
served jail time for treasonous activities in the service of Fatah,
has since been released and converted into Islam.
3. Auld Lang Zion

Should auld accomplice be forgot,
And never brought to trial?
Should auld Osloids, friend, be forgot,
In days of auld lang Zion?

For betraying auld lang Zion, my dear,
For abasing auld lang Zion.
Should their accomplice be forgot,
In days of auld lang Zion?

We yids ha'e run aboot the world,
Under fire the whole time.
We've wandered mony a weary foot,
To reach auld lang Zion.

Save auld lang Zion, my dear,
Save auld lang Zion,
Indict those Oslo blaggards, dear,
For the sake of auld lang Zion!!!

Hillary and the Obamae Denounce Israel's Treatment of Women

2011-12-29T22:43:00.001-08:00

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/30/womens-rights-and-double-standards/

Women's Rights and Double Standards

Posted By Steven Plaut On December 30, 2011

Well, it seems the Obama team lately was running short of things over
which to bash Israel and so it decided that the treatment of women in
Israel is something that needs condemnation. Led by Hillary Clinton,
the Obama administration thinks that Israel does not treat its women
nicely or respectfully enough. This is the same Hillary Clinton who
never had much to say about the treatment of women in the Clinton
White House. Other administration bashers of Israel joined the feeding
frenzy.

This is the same Obama team that rarely has had anything to say about
the treatment of women in the Muslim world, without a doubt the very
worst such treatment that can be found on the planet. Hillary
insisted that Israel's treatment of women is as bad as that in Iran,
although Obama people do not exactly speak out against the treatment
of women in Iran before breakfast each day. Hillary also used the
same opportunity to condemn Israel for considering the adoption of
transparency laws that would require disclosure of foreign funding to
political NGOs operating inside Israel, laws that are similar to what
the United States and many other democratic countries already have.
After all, how will those who desire Israel's annihilation be able to
finance picayune treasonous radical anti-Israel propaganda NGOs inside
Israel if such transparency ever takes effect?

So when Hillary Clinton recently decided to speak out against the
mistreatment of Middle Eastern women, she singled out Israel for
condemnation, and then turned around to welcome a delegation of Saudi
feudalists with cordiality. If Hillary considers Israel a force of
anti-feminine darkness and repression, just imagine how awful she must
regard Scandinavia. She compared Israel's treatment of women with the
racial segregation that once was so common in the American South.
Israeli public figures, led by the secularist non-Orthodox Minister of
Finance Yuval Steinitz, denounced Hillary's comments as absurd and
incorrect. He was joined by numerous other secularist Israelis.

The Obama administration is largely silent when it comes to the plight
of women in the Muslim world, but keeps condemning the only country in
the Middle East that has a woman chief justice, plenty of women in its
parliament, more women MDs and than men, countless women army officers
and court judges, and which has had a woman as head of state,
something the US has never had. Israel is also the only country in
the world where a panel of judges, two of them women, put a former
president in prison for alleged rape and sexual abuse of women. But
perhaps that is what really has Bill Clinton's wife so hostile to and
suspicious of Israel.

Women university students in Israel have been the majority out of all
undergraduate Israeli students since 1980, reaching 58% of students in
1999. That is without including teachers colleges in the computation,
where women are a far larger share. Women students are the majority
of students, not just in the fields of education and humanities, but
also in such "non-traditional" fields for women as biological sciences
and agriculture. Women are a majority of medical students, 48.3% of
law students, and 39% of physics students, according to the latest
survey. There are also oodles of women students in math, engineering,
and computer sciences. Women students are also a small majority of
those pursuing MA and PhD studies.

So just what got Hillary and the Obama team so upset? Well, it seems
that Israel has been debating the behavior of some small
ultra-religious Jewish sects, groups that believe in strict gender
separation, especially in public spaces. Known as the chareidim,
these are religious radicals, best known for their black clothing,
long sidecurls, anti-modern life styles, and especially for their
ideas about "modesty" for women. No Jew anywhere has to belong to
such communities and women in those communities unhappy with the life
style may leave at any time.

In some communities of these chareidim, there have been initiatives to
introduce a small number of special bus lines in which women and men
do not sit together. When a secularist Israeli woman rider challenged
the initiative and sat in the "men's section" of one such bus Israel's
ultra-secularist leftist media proclaimed her the Israeli Rosa Parks,
and Hillary picked up the cue. In another incident, some religious
soldiers requested not to be required to attend a concert in which
women were singing, on grounds that according to their religious
outlook such singing is erotic and immodest. And in yet other
incidents, some signs were put up in the neighborhoods of chareidim
asking women not to congregate on a street next to a synagogue, or
calling on men and women in the name of modesty to walk on opposing
sides of some streets in those neighborhoods.

Of course Hillary and the secularist media never object to signs in
mosques and churches in Israel and elsewhere that ask people not to
enter in immodest dress. Hillary and her Obama colleagues have never
condemned the Amish for their own pre-modern life styles and opinions
and gender roles. The enlightened media regard the Amish as downright
endearing, a charming tourist attraction. And you would never know it
from reading Hillary's statements, but one can find some neighborhoods
and communities of chareidim inside the United States, mainly in
Brooklyn and upstate New York, in which similar forms of gender
separation in the name of "modesty" are practiced. No one seems to
think this is grounds for a public outcry by politicians.

The enormous majority of Israelis reject the life style and opinions
of the chareidim, much as the bulk of Americans have no interest in
living the Amish life style. But the Amish generally are
beneficiaries of a "live and let live" attitude on the part of the
bulk of Americans. Most of the "conflicts" in Israel regarding the
"gender separation" sought by the chareidim would go away with similar
tolerance. The religious soldiers who asked to be excused from
listening to women singing did not demand that the singing event be
cancelled, and they were happy to do kitchen duty or guard duty
instead of attending. But their officers and secularist politicians
attempted to coerce them into attending to make a political point.
The chareidim who were denounced for requesting bus lines with
separate seating have now decided to finance their own independent
small bus company without public funding, in whose busses they can sit
in the manner they please. No one disturbed by those seating
arrangements need use those private bus lines or minibuses.

And no one really needs to heed any of those signs on those few
Israeli streets in chareidi neighborhoods that call upon people to
behave in manners the chareidim consider "modest." I have walked
through such neighborhoods with my wife dressed in pants and otherwise
"immodest" secularist dress and with my daughter wearing her army
uniform, and not a single resident said a single word to us about it.
Even when my daughter was not carrying her gun.

The Israeli media managed to uncover a tiny handful of cases in which
local chareidi residents spoke disrespectfully to some women or girls.
Well, I am a native Pennsylvanian and I have to tell you that I have
seen a few Pennsylvania Dutch hotheads speak disrespectfully to other
people. So what? Why is this news? The media rarely report cursing
or disrespectful speech by radical secularists.

The Israeli chareidi attitudes towards women and gender separation are
actually not any more "pre-modern" or feminist-challenged than are
those among Israeli Moslems, Druse, and some other non-Jewish minority
populations. It was rather curious that Hillary and the rest of the
Obama team did not denounce Israeli Moslems and Druse for also
practicing gender separation in public spaces in the name of
"modesty." Condemning non-Jews for gender segregation is just not
politically correct.

In a sense, Hillary was just following the lead of numerous
Bash-Israel leftist feminist organizations. Radical feminists and
their organizations have never been able to identify any mistreatment
of women in Arab countries beyond the supposed "suffering" of those
women due to Israeli "occupation." The feminists cannot conceive of a
better way to promote the interests of Moslem women than annihilation
of Israel and the accompanying genocide of Israel's Jewish population.
Feminist groups have rarely spoken out against Arab anti-Israel
terrorism, even though many of the victims of that terrorism are
themselves women. Even most of the feminist groups operating inside
Israel are radically pro-"Palestinian," pro-terror, anti-Israel, and
some are fronts for the Israeli communist party. They do not seem to
feel uncomfortable in the role of streetwalkers on behalf of
Islamofascism.

The treatment of women in Arab and Moslem countries is so atrocious
that space here would not allow for even a superficial survey. In the
very same week that Iran announced that a woman convicted of adultery
would be mercifully hanged to death instead of stoned to death, the
Obama team could find nothing more deserving of condemnation than the
treatment of women in the only country in the Middle East in which
women are treated as humans deserving of equal rights.

Professor Ze'ev Maoz joins Call to Shut Down the Politics Department at Ben Gurion University

2011-12-28T05:40:00.001-08:00

Professor Ze'ev Maoz (University of California and the Herzliya IDC)
endorses the Calls for The Complete Shutting Down of the Department of
Politics at Ben Gurion University; Insists it is a bunch of
substandard pseudo-academics

By Steven Plaut

I must tell you that I am not generally a fan of Prof. Ze'ev Maoz. He
is a leftist and his written some obnoxious anti-Israel articles and
expressed some anti-Israel opinions (here is one:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/morality-is-not-on-our-side-1.193739
I will cite some others below). He is currently on the faculty of
the University of California at Davis and teaches at the Herzliya
Interdisciplinary Center. He used to be a professor at Tel Aviv
University and at the University of Haifa.

But the fact that he is left of center makes what he has published
today even more important and newsworthy. Maoz has an Op-Ed in
Haaretz today endorsing the calls for the shutting down of the
Department of Politics at Ben Gurion University!

As you know, a recent international panel appointed by Israel's
Council on Higher Education denounced the Department of Politics at
Ben Gurion University for being a radical anti-Israel indoctrination
center and a Bash-Israel propaganda operation, with no serious
academic credentials and standards, an "unbalanced" (meaning
anti-Israel) group of pseudo-scholars. The panel proposed shutting
the department down altogether. Israel's radical anti-Israel tenured
Left and their foreign Bash-Israel amen chorus raced to defend the
department, while a rising chorus of pro-Israel voices have echoed the
call of the international panel.

Well, Prof. Maoz has chimed in on the controversy and he has issued
his own unambiguous call for closing the entire department of politics
at Ben Gurion University.

You can see Maoz' Op-Ed (in Hebrew) here:
http://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/1.1602889 . Haaretz is not running
the piece in English (we wonder why) but I will sum it up for you
here.

His Op-Ed is entitled, "Yes, Shut it Down!"

He begins by proclaiming that he is a proud member of the Israeli
Left. He then goes on to tell how the tenured Left has been lobbying
him to oppose the recommendations of the panel, and asking him to
recruit international support behind the Department of Politics at BGU
in the name of "academic freedom."

He then reveals that he himself had been recruited nine years ago by
the Council on Higher Education to evaluate the very same department
at BGU. At the time he proposed shutting down the entire department
for essentially the same reasons as those in the new panel report. He
claims his reasons were entirely academic, not political, just as the
current panel's recommendations are academic.

Back then, Maoz found that there are no serious academic standards in
place in that department. Most of the faculty members have no serious
credentials in political science. He says that not only was the
Council on Higher Education not conducting a witch-hunt against the
Politics department at BGU, but it even refused to implement Maoz' own
recommendations, treated the department with permissive (his word) kid
gloves, allowed it to go on functioning and even to develop new
programs for students, and refused to apply the same rigorous
standards to the department of Neve Gordon and David Newman that it
was applying to all other departments across the board.

He concludes that the Department of Politics at BGU is an academic
disgrace and the petitions of support for it are motivated by the most
dubious of motives. Translation: those petitions consist of
anti-Israel extremists seeking to defend other anti-Israel
pseudo-academic extremists from criticism and accountability.

Here are some previous items I posted about Ze'ev Maoz, to convince
you that he is no raving Right-winger:

Ze'ev Maoz, Tel Aviv University
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/742257.html
"There's practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the North
is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth must be
said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective memory, an
introverted worldview, and double standards.
This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force without
distinguishing between civilian population and enemy, whose sole purpose
is extortion. That is not to say that morality and justice are on
Hezbollah's side. Most certainly not. But the fact that Hezbollah "started
it" when it kidnapped soldiers from across an international border does
not even begin to tilt the scales of justice toward our side."
Some more pearls from the mouth of Ze'ev Maoz: In October, 1996 he said:
"chance of army coup now possible." And in August 1996: "If the political
deadlock continues for a long time, and Syria reaches the conclusion that
there is no solution in the political option, it may reconsider the
military option as a viable one," he [Ze'ev Maoz] wrote.
In March 2002 he was interviewed saying: "Any initiative that comes from
the Arab world makes me considerably more optimistic," says Ze'ev Maoz, an
Israeli political scientist, "because it has the potential ... to lower
the psychological barriers that many Israelis have in terms of making
concessions for peace." At the same article it said: "Tel Aviv University
professor Maoz says Israeli supporters of a negotiated solution are
"regrouping because they are starting to realize that a policy of applying
force just for the sake of applying force, without any sort of political
vision, doesn't lead anywhere."
Further reading on Ze'ev Maoz:
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/4768/edition_id/87/format/html/displaystory.html
c
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/4316/edition_id/78/format/html/displaystory.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0308/p06s01-wome.html
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/sep96/basch.htm (half way down the page)

Israel's Tenured Left Demands Censorship! The death of academic freedom in Israel!

2011-12-26T01:51:00.001-08:00

The latest cause of Israel's tenured radicals is censorship. They
are all in FAVOR of it!

Hundreds of Israeli academics are issuing calls and signing
petitions demanding that a book containing unfashionable comments
about homosexuality be censored and barred from any use in academic
institutions. Not a single one of these tenured sheep ever condemned
the "book" by Tel Aviv University's Shlomo Sand that claimed that
there is no such thing as a Jewish people and that today's Jews are
merely descendents from converted Khazars and Berbers, having no
rights at all to self-determination and statehood. Not a single
participant in the campaign for censorship this week ever offered the
opinion that Sand's book should be removed from library shelves and
course syllabi. And not a single crusader for censorship this week
thinks that minority dissenting opinions about homosexuality have the
right to be aired in classrooms and textbooks.

The ruckus this week over homosexuality involves a standard
Hebrew textbook in psychiatry entitled, "Prakim nivharim
b'psichiatria" ("Select Chapters in Psychiatry") the most recent
edition of was published in 2010. It expresses some unfashionable and
"politically incorrect" opinions about homosexuality. It describes
homosexuality as a disorder, insisting it is curable, and endorses
"conversion therapy," which is vehemently opposed by homosexual
militant organizations. The chapter that today's censors are upset
over was written by Prof. Shmuel Tiano, former director of the Geha
Psychiatric Hospital in Petah Tikva.

You can see the Haaretz report on the ruckus in English here:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israeli-textbook-slammed-for-calling-homosexuality-a-disorder-1.403572

A number of homosexual activist academics started a campaign
against the book, and the chat lists of Israeli faculty are filled
with calls for suppression of the book and censorship of "incorrect"
ideas about homosexuality. The book contains "incorrect
information," insist the censors. Suppose that it does. But so does
the book by Shlomo Sand. Since when does the fact that a book
contains incorrect information entitle the leftist thought police to
suppress and censor it?

The tenured censors insist that students be prevented from hearing
the opinion that homosexuality is a disorder, and a treatable one at
that. Their vehement insistence that homosexuality is NOT a disorder
might be more easily marketable if these were not the very same people
also insisting that "transgendered" people (transvestites and those
who undergo genital mutilation) are ALSO "normal" people suffering
from no disorders at all. Without getting into a whole debate here
about homosexuality in general, let me just say that it is my opinion
that by adding that "T" to the "LGB" to construct "LGBT," the
politicized homosexual militant movement (which is almost always
anti-Semitic and pro-terror, by the way) has also shot itself in its
own foot and undercut any chances it ever had of persuading the
general public of its case for legitimizing homosexuality.

And by leading the jihad for censorship, Israel's own militant
homosexuals, led by its tenured pinks, is showing its own fundamental
hostility to freedom of speech, academic freedom, and democracy.

Hannuka Among the Hellenists

2011-12-24T23:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/12/hannuka_among_the_hellenists_1.html

(reprint)

December 15, 2006
Hannuka Among the Hellenists
By Steven Plaut

Of all the Jewish holidays, the one that I think best captures the
contemporary Jewish zeitgeist, the one that is the most relevant to
the current (and, if certain trends are not reversed, the last?)
chapter in Jewish history, is Hannuka.

Hannuka is, of course, the story of Jewish national liberation. It is
the story of the military victory of the few against the many, of the
champions of Judaism against the pagan barbarians.

But it is more than this. It is the saga of the heroic struggle of
Jewish survivalists (those one would today label "Zionists") against
the assimilationists and self-hating Hellenists of the second century
BCE.

Hannuka is less a story about the battle against the Greeks than it is
about the battle against the predominant assimilationist paradigm at
the time among the Jews. It is about the battle against the
anti-survivalists, those who hated themselves for being Jews, those
who seek to be "progressive", "modern", and "in", through rejecting,
abasing, disgracing and degrading themselves and their people. The
Hellenists who fought the Hasmoneans were struggling against Jewish
survival. Sound familiar?

In the United States, the main movement of Hellenistic assimilationism
has been the school of "Political Liberalism as Judaism", the
pseudo-religion that holds that all of Judaism can be reduced to the
pursuit of this week's liberal political fads. But the global avante
garde of Jewish self-hatred these days is the Israeli Left.

The Israeli Left is the main manifestation today of Jewish anti-Semitism.

It not only promotes "plans" and policies designed to end Israel's
existence, increasingly endorsing the one-state, bi-national Rwanda
solution to the "problem" of Israeli national existence, but it also
regularly attacks every symbol and concept of traditional Judaism.

You think I am exaggerating? Well just consider the Op-Ed a few years
back in the Israeli anti-Zionist daily Haaretz, penned by one Yehiam
Shorek, a "historian" who teaches at the Beit Berl College in Israel.
Beit Berl is a college run by the kibbutz movement.

The "historian" Shorek devoted his Haaretz column to proving that the
Maccabees were fascist and racist hooligans, bloodthirsty zealots, and
downright Likudniks. His column was entitled "Bloodthirsty Zealots".
His thesis was that Jews should stop celebrating Hannuka and the
exploits of the Maccabees, and should instead feel sympathy for the
poor occupied and mistreated Greeks and Hellenists.

His article was not a spoof.

The evil Maccabees were plotting to perpetrate population "transfer",
wrote Shorek, that most evil of all crimes in the "minds" of Israel's
fundamentalist Leftists. Population "transfer" is far worse than, say,
mass murdering 2000 Jews after signing with them a series of peace
accords, or turning the West Bank and Gaza over to barbarian fascists
to allow them to carry out such mass murders. Shorek is a member of
that same Fundamentalist Left that will not rest until all Jews have
been expelled from the West Bank and Gaza in an act of ethnic
cleansing, and until no Israeli armed forces are left behind to
interfere with the terrorist activities of the "Palestinians."

Matityahu, the father of Judah Maccabee and his brothers, was a
lunatic, wrote Shorek. He was a warmonger who dragged his country into
an unnecessary "war of choice", one that was not a legitimate "war of
self-defense". (Never mind that there is nothing at all in Judaism
that says Jews should refrain from conquering their lands unless it is
part of a war of self-defense.) The Maccabees were the aggressors,
insisted Shorek. And they suppressed the free speech of those who
supported the Greeks; how undemocratic of them!

Judah Maccabee was guilty of causing many families to lose their loved
ones by leading people to war, wrote Shorek, instead of pursuing some
sort of Hellenistic Oslo appeasement and capitulation, the sort the
"enlightened Left" seeks today to impose upon Israel. All Judah
Maccabee really wanted to do was to Occupy, Occupy, Occupy, insists
Shorek. No better than the West Bank settlers today! And not only
that, but Judah and his hooligans were Orthodox Jews, which every
leftist knows must make them primitive and barbaric; you know, unlike
the enlightened Marxist historians who live on nice kibbutzim or teach
at the Beit Berl college.

Unfortunately, Shorek is hardly a lone phenomenon. Israel's
anti-Jewish leftists have been launching similar jihads against every
other symbol of Jewish valor. Masada was a cesspool of non-tolerant
fanatics, according to them. The Bible is a backward document full of
fabrications. Schools should stop teaching it altogether, they demand,
and instead teach something really useful, like the works of
Palestinian "poets". Archeology proves the Bible is nothing but lies
and fantasy, they insist. One wag labeled such people Pentateuch
Deniers (intended as a play on "Holocaust Deniers").

In Israel, the country's politics - particularly its
cultural/educational elite and its chattering classes - are now
largely dominated by those motivated by the desire for their country
to commit national suicide. They scorn themselves, their own country
and their own people, the same way that the Hellenized Jews did at the
time of the Maccabees. Many endorse boycotts of Israel by anti-Semites
abroad. Like the Hellenized Jews, they are convinced that
traditionalist Jews are reactionary and primitive, and that the
greatest national priority should be renunciation of Jewish
peculiarity and the striving to assimilate amongst the cosmopolitan
progressive "Greeks" of the world. They are ashamed of their
Jewishness and convinced that the only path to peace is to renounce
it. They insist that a Seleucid "narrative" should replace the Jews'
own reactionary national one.

Israel's universities are by and large the Occupied Territories of
these Hellenists. The Israeli media is to almost the same extent.
Hellenists dominate much of the Israeli military and, somewhat
incredibly, the intelligence services. (It is doubtful the country
could have undergone the Oslo debacle had these intelligence services
not operated as lap dogs for the Beilinized Israeli Left.)

Hellenists have attempted to rewrite the Israeli school curriculum, to
teach Israeli Jewish children to despise themselves. Their message is
that Jews must feel ashamed, because they are mean, selfish, evil and
immoral people. Surely, there would be no anti-Semitism on the planet
were not the Jews such racist and insensitive people.

Their aim is to convince the Jews that the only way they may become
accepted in the world is to adapt to paganism, to stop seeking to
exist as a separate national entity, to commit national suicide.
Moreover, their campaign is aimed at challenging the moral existence
of the Jews. They realize this is the weakest chink in the armor of
the Jews. If Jews can be convinced that they are morally in the wrong,
then no Maccabees will emerge. The aim of the Jewish Hellenists is the
delegitimization of the Jews as a nation, discrediting the moral
position of Jewish survivalism.

The message of the contemporary Hellenists is unambiguous: Those who
wish to purify the Temple, who seek pure oil for the Temple lamp, who
wish to evict the barbarians from Jerusalem, are the enemies of peace.
The Maccabees must be arrested for incitement. The Jews must provide
Antiochus with concessions and arms and funds and a Road Map. Under no
circumstances should the Jews seek to defend themselves militarily
against the Seleucids, for there is no military solution to the
problem of Seleucid aggression. If the barbarians murder the Jews, it
is because the Jews are evil, selfish people and because they have
been too reluctant to abandon their primitive survivalism.

If the Israeli anti-Jewish Left has its way, the Post-Hasmonean,
post-survivalist era will be upon us.

2. Ben Gurion University's leading "thinker" - comments on the true Maccabees:

http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/BGU%20-%20Lev%20Grinberg%20-%20real%20Maccabis.htm

University of London's Efraim Karsh Exposes Ben Gurion University's Pseudo-Academic anti-Israel Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities, David Newman

2011-12-22T22:51:00.001-08:00

University of London's Efraim Karsh Exposes Ben Gurion University's
Pseudo-Academic anti-Israel Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities,
David Newman

Karsh in Hudson NY: "Betraying Ben-Gurion"

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Betraying Ben-Gurion

by Efraim Karsh
Hudson New York
December 22, 2011

It is ironic that Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), Israel's
only university bearing the name of the Jewish state's founding
father, and established in the ancient desert he dreamt of reviving,
has become a hotbed of anti-Israel propaganda at the expense of proper
scholarly endeavor.

So much so that an international committee of scholars, appointed by
Israel's Council for Higher Education to evaluate political science
and international relations programs in Israeli universities, recently
recommended that BGU "consider closing the Department of Politics and
Government" unless it abandoned its "strong emphasis on political
activism," improved its research performance, and redressed the
endemic weakness "in its core discipline of political science." In
other words, they asked that the Department return to accurate
scholarship rather than indoctrinate the students with libel.

The same day the committee's recommendation was revealed, Professor
David Newman -- who founded that department and bequeathed it such a
problematic ethos, for which "achievement" he was presumably rewarded
with a promotion to Deanship of the Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences, from where he can shape other departments in a similar way
-- penned an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post in which he compared Israel's
present political culture to that of Nazi Germany. "I will no doubt be
strongly criticized for compared making such a comparison," he wrote,

but we would do well to paraphrase the famous words of Pastor
Niemoller, writing in 1946 about Germany of the 1930s and 1940s: "When
the government denied the sovereign rights of the Palestinians, I
remained silent; I was not a Palestinian.
When they discriminated against the Arab citizens of the country, I
remained silent; I was not an Arab. When they expelled the hapless
refugees, I remained at home; I was no longer a refugee. When they
came for the human rights activists, I did not speak out; I was not an
activist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out."

Even if every single charge in this paraphrase were true, Israel would
still be light years apart from Nazi Germany. But one need not be a
politics professor or faculty dean to see the delusion in these
assertions.

To begin with, which Israeli government has denied "the sovereign
rights of the Palestinians"? That of David Ben-Gurion which accepted
the 1947 partition resolution with alacrity? Or those headed by Shimon
Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin Netanyahu,
which explicitly endorsed the two-state solution? Has Newman perhaps
mistaken Israel's founding father for Hajj Amin Husseini, leader of
the Palestinian Arabs from the early 1920s to the 1940s, who
tirelessly toiled to ethnically cleanse Palestine's Jewish community
and destroy the nascent state of Israel? Or possibly for Husseini's
successors, from Yasser Arafat, to Ahmad Yassin, to Mahmoud Abbas,
whose commitment to Israel's destruction has been equally unwavering?

There is no moral equivalence whatever between the Nazi persecution,
exclusion, segregation, and eventually industrial slaughter of
European Jewry, and Israel's treatment of its Arab population. Not
only do the Arabs in Israel enjoy full equality before the law, but
from the designation of Arabic as an official language, to the
recognition of non-Jewish religious holidays as legal resting days for
their respective communities, Arabs in Israel have enjoyed more
prerogatives than ethnic minorities anywhere in the democratic world.

To put it more bluntly, while six million Jews, three quarters of
European Jewry, died at the hands of the Nazis in the six years that
Hitler dominated Europe, Israel's Arab population has not only leapt
tenfold during the Jewish state's 63 years of existence - from 156,000
in 1948 to 1.57 million in 2010 - but its rate of social and economic
progress has often surpassed that of the Jewish sector, with the
result that the gap between the two communities has steadily narrowed.

It is precisely this exemplary, if by no means flawless, treatment of
its Arab citizens that underlies their clear preference of Israeli
citizenship to that of one in a prospective Palestinian state (a
sentiment shared by most East Jerusalem Palestinians). This preference
has also recently driven tens of thousands of African Muslims
illegally to breach the Jewish state's border in search of employment,
rather than to stay in Egypt, whose territory they have to cross on
the way. The treatment of mass illegal immigration (hardly the hapless
refugees presented by Newman) is a major problem confronting most
democracies in the West these days, where there is an ongoing debate
about what are the basic responsibilities of governments for their
citizens' wellbeing and the right of nations to determine the identity
of those entering their territory.

Even more mind-boggling is Newman's equating Israel's attempt to
prevent foreign funding of Israeli nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) involved in the international Israel de-legitimization campaign
-- along the lines of the US Foreign Agents Legislation Act -- with
repressing political opponents by the Nazi regime. What "human rights
activists" have been unlawfully detained by the Israeli government,
let alone rounded up and thrown into concentration camps? On what
planet does the Ben-Gurion University faculty dean live?

But Newman is not someone to be bothered by the facts. His is the
standard "colonialist paradigm" prevalent among Israeli and Western
academics, which views Zionism, and by extension the state of Israel,
not as a legitimate expression of national self-determination but as
"a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement" (in the words of
another BGU professor) - an offshoot of European imperialism at its
most rapacious.

And therein, no doubt, lies the problem with BGU's Politics and
Government Department: the only Israeli department singled out by the
international committee for the unprecedented recommendation of
closure. For if its founder and long-time member, who continues to
wield decisive influence over its direction, views Israel as a
present-day reincarnation of Nazi Germany in several key respects, how
conceivably can the department ensure the "sustained commitment to
providing balance and an essential range of viewpoints and
perspectives on the great issues of politics" required for its
continued existence?

Efraim Karsh is research professor of Middle East and Mediterranean
Studies at King's College London, director of the Middle East Forum
(Philadelphia) and author, most recently, of Palestine Betrayed.

http://www.meforum.org/3136/ben-gurion-university

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The Middle East Forum

The Ongoing Saga of Israeli Apartheid

2011-12-21T11:03:00.001-08:00

Short Headlines in the Ongoing Saga of Israeli Apartheid

1. Abu Dawud was the guerilla pseudonym of Muhammed Dahud Udeh, the
uber-terrorhoid who planned and organized the 1972 massacre of Israeli
athletes at the Munich Olympics. He died last year, much too late and
much too easily. His widow is still alive and waddling. She was
allowed by Israel this past week, a bit foolishly, to enter the
country from Syria in order to attend a funeral. She fainted after
the funeral and was hospitalized in Ramallah by the "Palestinians."
Before her medical team had a chance to kill her with their
incompetence, she asked to be treated in Tel Aviv at the city's
fanciest private hospital, Assuta. Israel agreed and she was. You
and I are shouldering her costs.

2. This week three Jewish teenagers were arrested on suspicion of
having attacked Arab teenagers and yelling at them "Arabs, get out."
The police wanted them remanded and charged with racism, even though
the mother of one of the Arabs who claims he was attacked insists that
the background to the quarrel was not ethnic but just teenage
hooliganism. When they were brought before the judge, he assigned to
the Jewish teenagers the public defenders who were on duty that day.
They were Arab lawyers. They defended the Jewish teenagers and in
fact got them released. When asked how they felt about having
successfully released Jewish teenagers accused of attacking Arab
teenagers, the public defenders said Just Fine. (Story in Yediot
Ahronot today.) So as you can see, Israeli apartheid is all alive and
kicking.

3. You may recall that hundreds of Israel's tenured leftists signed
petitions and organized caravans of solidarity to a small Galilee
mosque that was vandalized a few months back, apparently by Jewish
vandals. Well, today's headline is
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/150924
Police Silent on Synagogue Fire in Ramle
A member of Ramle's Jewish community say police are trying to hide the
rise of attacks on Jews in the city after a synagogue is "Torched"

Quick, guess how many of those same tenured leftists who signed the
earlier petition or who made pilgrimages to the village in the Galilee
with the vandalized mosque have signed petitions or spoken out about
this new incident!

While you are computing your answer, here is a followup question:

Baaa Baaa Tenured Sheep, have you any wool?
Yassir, Yassir, two bags full.
One for the mosque, sir, and one for the church,
But none for the little shul that burned down the lane.

The Jihad on behalf of Ben Gurion University’s Tenured Extremists

2011-12-20T01:58:00.001-08:00

The Jihad on behalf of Ben Gurion University's Tenured Extremists
By Steven Plaut

In Israel there are two schools of thought as to what a university
should be. The first school of thought, a shrinking minority opinion
on Israeli campuses, holds that universities should be centers of
scholastic inquiry, research, scientific exploration and analysis, and
teaching. The second school of thought, which is the growing
majority position, holds that universities should be indoctrination
centers in which radical leftist anti-Israel and sometimes Marxist
ideology is drummed into students by tenured thought police. Under
the second school of thought, faculty leftists bully students into
toeing the ideological line and agreeing with the ideological
positions of the lecturers, a bit like re-education camps in North
Korea. Student grades often depend upon their endorsing and agreeing
with the leftist anti-Israel positions of faculty members. Faculty
members are hired and promoted in many departments based on their
leftist ideological purity. Bashing Israel has become both a
necessary and a sufficient condition for being hired in many
university departments in Israel.

The comparative prevalence of the two schools of thought varies by
disciplines. Natural sciences and engineering usually are dominated
by the first school. Social sciences, humanities, education and law
schools are dominated by the second. The political biases are well
documented at the web site of Isracampus (www.isracampus.org.il ).

The first school of thought is very strong at all four of Israel's
liberal-arts universities (Tel Aviv University, Ben Gurion University,
Hebrew University, University of Haifa), and is weaker at the
science-engineering institutions (Technion and Weizmann) and at the
nominally religious Bar-Ilan University.

In many ways Ben Gurion University is the very worst offender. The
most infamous of the "academic" units in Israel in which the second
school of thought dominates is the department of political science at
Ben Gurion University. There no Zionist or non-leftist is permitted
to teach. The one single dissenting pro-Israel faculty member who
once taught there was fired by the university for incorrect thinking.
The department was largely erected by one David Newman, currently Dean
of social sciences and humanities at Ben Gurion University, a
geographer (and Jerusalem Post columnist) who believes that academic
freedom means critics of the Left should be silenced and suppressed.
In the politics department he built, far-leftist anti-Israel faculty
members get evaluated for hiring and promotion by appointing
evaluation committees consisting of other far-leftist anti-Israel
extremists who then solicit evaluation letters from still other
far-leftist anti-Israel radical academics from around the world. The
results of these politicized and corrupt "evaluation procedures" of
faculty members is visible to all.

The conversion of the department of politics at Ben Gurion University
into an anti-Israel indoctrination camp has by now become well known
around the world and to everyone in Israel. Last year Israel's
Council on Higher Education, which oversees and funds Israel's
universities (and is composed of representatives of those same
universities) appointed a special commission to investigate and
evaluate the Department of Politics at Ben Gurion University. That
commission found what everyone already knew, that the department is a
radical monolithic politicized incitement camp, not a serious academic
department, one in which anti-Israel activism had replaced serious
scholarship, and in which serious academic standards have been
trashed. The commission proposed that the entire department be shut
down unless radical reform and restructuring takes place, including
complete de-politicization of and introduction of real pluralism into
the department.

Since that CHE report was issued, Israel's radical Left, led by its
tenured Left, has been leading a campaign to defend the anti-Israel
indoctrination camp calling itself the Department of Politics at Ben
Gurion University. They have been joined by the President of Ben
Gurion University, Rivka Carmi, who sees nothing wrong with a
university department engaged in anti-Israel agitation in which no
pro-Israel person may teach. And they are also being championed by
Haaretz, the radical anti-Israel leftist "newspaper," better thought
of as a Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew. These people
insist that preserving the second school of thought in Israeli
academia is the country's highest priority. Universities must
continue to serve to indoctrinate students into correct leftist
anti-Israel ideology. All attempts at interfering with this sacred
mission must be resisted and defeated.

Now the tenured Left in Israel is organizing petitions of like-minded
radical tenured leftists in Israel and around the world to express
their support and solidarity with the Ben Gurion University
indoctrination camp. Here is the report in Haaretz about this:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/academics-seek-to-keep-biased-ben-gurion-department-open-1.402450
. An actual examination of those signing the petitions shows that
they are themselves radical Marxist and anti-Israel pseudo-academics.
So naturally they identify with the sacred need to preserve and defend
leftist pseudo-academic indoctrination at Ben Gurion University.

While one could go through the lists of signers of the petition name
by name to document their own anti-Israel far-leftist biases, it is
sufficient to illustrate the point with one of the leading signers,
Berkeley's Judith Butler. She is a notorious collaborator with
anti-Semites and supporter of Israel annihilation. An analysis of the
academic credentials and political bias of Butler appears here:

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/09/collaborators-in-the-war-against-the-jews-judith-butler/

The full piece is reprinted here:

Collaborators in the War against the Jews: Judith Butler
Posted By Steven Plaut On March 9, 2010
Professor Judith Butler from Berkeley's Department of Rhetoric and
Comparative Literature is not just your ordinary deconstructionist
feminist anti-Semite. A self-proclaimed leading scholar in the
pseudo-discipline of "Queer Studies," she is also one of the leading
academic defenders of anti-Semitism, which she insists is not
anti-Semitic at all. She has devoted much of her academic career to
the struggle to see Israel eliminated. While often posturing as a
free speech absolutist, she is also absolutely opposed to Israelis
having any academic freedom and is a leader in the attempt to impose a
world boycott against Israeli universities. Naturally, she has never
come out in favor of an academic boycott of Syria, Libya, Iran, Cuba,
or the Hamas. Hamas and Hezbollah may seek the extermination of every
Jew on the planet and not just of Israel, but Butler still likes to
wave her "Jewish roots" when she serves as an apologist for them.
Butler is perhaps best remembered as one of the most strident
attackers against Lawrence Summers, the ex-President of Harvard. She
was horrified when Summers proclaimed: "Profoundly anti-Israel views
are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual
communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking
actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent
(September 17, 2002)." Butler venomously denounced Summers for
telling the truth, arguing that telling the truth threatens academic
freedom: "Summers has struck a blow against academic freedom, in
effect, if not in intent."
Edward Alexander, who is also a professor of comparative literature,
explains that Butler's hysterical attacks on Summers stemmed from
something more than her girlish enthusiasm:
"Butler had herself signed the divestment (against Israel) petition at
its place of origin, Berkeley, where it had circulated in February
2001. She therefore found Summers' remarks not only wrong but
personally 'hurtful' since they implicated Judith Butler herself in
the newly resurgent campus anti-Semitism. Butler could hardly have
failed to notice that the Berkeley divestment petition had supplied
the impetus and inspiration for anti-Israel mob violence on her own
campus on 24 April 2001, a few weeks after it had been circulated, and
for more explicitly anti-Jewish mobs at San Francisco State University
in May of the following year."
Summers insists that people who oppose Israel's very existence are
anti-Semitic. The fact that a second Jewish Holocaust would result
from Israel's annihilation does not seem to matter to his attackers
like Butler. She writes, "A challenge to the right of Israel to exist
can be construed as a challenge to the existence of the Jewish people
only if one believes that Israel alone keeps the Jewish people alive
or that all Jews invest their sense of perpetuity in the state of
Israel in its current or traditional forms." The fact that the very
people calling for Israel to be annihilated are not calling for the
elimination of any other country, not even a single one of the 22
fascist Arab states, cannot possibly have anything to do with
anti-Semitism, she insists.
Butler's proof that anti-Israel radicals are not really anti-Semites?
It is that she manages to find some anti-Israel extremists among
Israelis, the Israeli equivalents to Taliban John, Lord Haw-Haw, and
Noam Chomsky. She writes, "Identifying Israel with Jewry obscures the
existence of the small but important post-Zionist movement in Israel,
including the philosophers Adi Ophir and Anat Biletzki, the
sociologist Uri Ram, the professor of theatre Avraham Oz and the poet
Yitzhak Laor. Are we to say that Israelis who are critical of Israeli
policy are self-hating Jews, or insensitive to the ways in which
criticism may fan the flames of anti-Semitism?" The proper answer to
her question is often: yes.
Butler recently showed up in the Middle East, to strut her support for
the intifada. As a militant feminist, however, she was on a bizarre
mission. In February, 2010, she spent her time in the West Bank
shilling for the very same Palestinian Islamic terrorist groups who
make a point out of torturing and murdering homosexuals and who insist
that the place of women in Muslim society is somewhere out back and
out of sight, barefoot and scarved. Like so many apologists for
Islamofascism, the only "oppression" of Palestinian women Butler could
find was their supposed mistreatment by the Zionist "occupiers." You
know, the same ones who have a woman Chief Justice in their Supreme
Court, who have more women doctors than men, and who have elected a
woman as Prime Minister. Butler denounced Israel at length for its
"mistreatment" of Arab women, and never mind that they are treated at
least a thousand times better by Israel than they are inside any Arab
regime. Meanwhile, Islamic religious figures in Egypt have been
proclaiming that Muslims have the natural right to rape all Jewish
women. Butler has yet to issue a response to that.
To remove all doubt, Butler made it clear that she objects to Israel's
presence not only in the West Bank, where she was doing her Terrorism
Grand Tour. She also wants Israel removed from within Israel's
pre-1967 borders. Butler has long supported a worldwide boycott of
Israel, and not simply because Israel "occupies" the West Bank. She
has made it clear that she demands that Israel allow millions of Arabs
claiming to be Palestinian "refugees" to flood into Israel and convert
it into yet another Palestinian Arab state. She wants this even after
the creation of some Palestinian state.
While in the West Bank, Butler went to visit a "theater" in the
terrorist stronghold of Jenin. Theatrics is largely what Jenin is all
about. During Israel's battle against terrorists there in April of
2002, the Bash-Israel Left invented fictional tales about Israel
carrying out a "massacre," some even calling it a "genocide." As it
turned out, after days of Jenin street-to-street gun battles, launched
by the Palestinians intentionally in built-up urban areas, 23 Israeli
soldiers were killed along with a few dozen terrorists. Less than 20
Palestinian civilians died in the intense urban firefight, largely
because Israel foreswore reducing the town to rubble using artillery
to spare civilian collateral damage. It sacrificed the lives of its
own soldiers for that reason. And this was called "genocide." A
propaganda film about the battle called "Jenin, Jenin" was later
produced by Israeli Arab pro-terror director Mohammed Bakri, who
himself publicly admitted that his film was a tissue of lies. Bakri
is now being sued by some Israeli soldiers for libel.
Butler explained to her terrorist hosts that she opposes the existence
of a Jewish state even alongside some future Palestinian Arab state.
Instead, she favors what she calls a bi-national state, something
along the lines of Rwanda. She claims to be some sort of authority
on Hannah Arendt and promotes her anti-Israel "bi-nationalism" by
obsessively citing Arendt's ancient writings on bi-nationalism (at
Berkeley Butler is officially the "Hannah Arendt Professor"). Of
course, no one knows just what Arendt would have to say about the
Arab-Israeli conflict in the twenty-first century. But one suspects
that anyone like Arendt who spent so much time studying the
totalitarian mindset would retch at the willingness of people like
Butler to vouch and shill for Palestinian violence.
Butler writes: "And if we have a bi-national state, it's expressing
two nations. Only when bi-nationalism deconstructs the idea of a
nation can we hope to think about what a state, what a polity might
look like that would actually extend equality." Come to think of it,
the genocidal consequences of bi-nationalism in Rwanda are pretty
close to what Butler seems to have in mind for the Israeli Jews. Among
the terrorists who hosted her in Jenin was Zakaria Zabeidi, a head of
the genocidal "Al Aqsa" Brigades. Assaf Wohl, a columnist in Israel's
leading daily Yediot Ahronot, dismissed Butler as a Jewish
anti-Semite.
According to Professor Edward Alexander,
"Prior to the autumn of 2003, this University of California professor
of rhetoric and comparative literature was, like many members of
Berkeley's 'progressive' Jewish community with which she habitually
identifies herself, somebody who defined her 'Jewishness' (not exactly
Judaism) in opposition to the State of Israel. She was mainly a signer
of petitions harshly critical of the Jewish state, full of mean spite
towards its alleged 'apartheid' and 'bantustan' practices, oily
sycophancy towards such Palestinian figures as Sari Nusseibeh, and a
habit of covering over the brutality of Arab terror with the soft snow
of Latinized euphemisms. She was one of the 3700 American Jews opposed
to 'occupation' (Israeli, not Syrian or Chinese or any other) who
signed an 'Open Letter' urging the American government to cut
financial aid to Israel; later she expressed misgiving about signing
that particular petition–it 'was not nearly strong enough…it did not
call for the end of Zionism.'"
Butler, whose PhD is actually in philosophy, is a walking illustration
of the very worst things wrong with the humanities. She is a leading
American proponent of "Queer Theory" (which is what she calls it.)
You will never discover in "Queer Theory" any scientific hypotheses
about what produces homosexuality. Instead, it serves as the umbrella
term for politicized militant homosexuals seeking the annihilation of
America, Israel, and capitalism. Whether such people seriously think
that homosexuals are treated better in non-capitalist regimes and in
the Islamic sections of the Third World is doubtful.
Butler's favorite prefix is "post." She uses it more often than the
Cliff-the-Mailman character on "Cheers." She proudly describes
herself a "Post-Zionist," by which she means she is anti-Zionist.
Butler likes to describe herself as a "poststructuralist," and
sometimes also as a "Post-Marxist," which – as far as we can tell –
seems to mean a Marxist. (The Marxist New Left Review is one of
Butler's favorite venues.) She claims to reject "dialectics" as her
political theology because it is too "phallogocentric," and that has
upset some of the members of the academic Comintern.
Like so many members of the tenured Left – her favorite methodology of
analysis is the silly polysyllable. Her writings ooze
"Deconstructionist" jive and are exercises in the worst forms of
pseudo-academic NewSpeak. And that is when she is sticking to her
actual "discipline," not pontificating about the Middle East, about
which she has no expertise or training at all. "Deconstruction" is
the nonsensical infantile "philosophy" that argues that words have no
meaning, there are no facts nor truth, and the only thing we can
really be absolutely certain about are that the US and capitalism and
Israel are evil and must be eliminated. Language is the ultimate form
of tyranny and source of control over us oppressed folks by those evil
elites. There are no false narratives, just different subjectivities.
Deconstructionism has become something of a pseudo-intellectual
orthodoxy among certain of our academic colleagues, especially those
in the academic professions that never quite found out where's the
beef.
Butler's "theories" about feminism include her argument that sexual
relations are "performative," and are based on "regulatory discourse."
The "system" attempts to impose "constructions of binary asymmetric
gender." She has even devoted time to celebrating drag queens:
"There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is
a kind of imitation for which there is no original." A fuller
collection of some of her bizarre pronouncements can be read here.
She insists, "Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed
but socially constructed," which seems to prove that she never took
any biology courses back at Yale.
A typical Butler bloviation is this:
"Performativity cannot be understood outside of a process of
iterability, a regularized and constrained repetition of norms. And
this repetition is not performed by a subject; this repetition is what
enables a subject and constitutes the temporal condition for the
subject. This iterability implies that 'performance' is not a singular
'act' or event, but a ritualized production, a ritual reiterated under
and through constraint, under and through the force of prohibition and
taboo, with the threat of ostracism and even death controlling and
compelling the shape of the production, but not, I will insist,
determining it fully in advance." (From Butler, Judith 1993; Bodies
That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex". New York: Routledge.
pp. 95. )
It is almost impossible to read a sentence by Butler without reacting
with a loud "Huh?" So much of it sounds like a parody of an academic
being concocted by "The Onion" or "National Lampoon." In 1998 she won
first-prize in the Bad Writing Contest sponsored by the academic
journal Philosophy and Literature. She won for this sentence:
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood
to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view
of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition,
convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality
into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of
Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical
objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility
of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up
with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of
power."
So much of what Butler writes is so mindless and filled with so many
grammatical flaws that one wonders how her text survives a word
processing program. Butler's take on the 9-11 attacks on America was
that "the violent acts of 9/11 is (sic) exacerbated by the inability
of Americans to recognize the precariousness of non-American
(particularly Muslim) lives. They are always already dead, and
therefore cannot be killed." Huh? She insists that the West is guilty
of this: "These excluded are brutally subjected to the "violence of
derealization." Huh? She "claims that the War on Terror has provided
a climate where the sexual freedoms she and others fought for are now
misused to symbolize (sic) the shining, gleaming modernity of the
West. The backwardness and inferiority of 'others' is counterposed
(sic) and underscored against this." Huh?
In an interview she explains how her feminism differs from that of
some of the others, like Catharine MacKinnon or Andrea Dworkin: "I'm
not always calling into question who's a man and who's not, and am I a
man? Maybe I'm a man [laughs]." She is not one of those folks in favor
of homosexual marriage, by the way. In fact she is opposed to
marriage: "It's very hard to speak freely right now, but many gay
people are uncomfortable with all this, because they feel their sense
of an alternative movement is dying. Sexual politics was supposed to
be about finding alternatives to marriage."
Butler was one of the noisiest people denouncing the Campus-Watch
website for daring to criticize anti-Israel radical Middle East
Studies faculty members. Naturally, Butler thinks that critics of
anti-Israel radicals are not entitled to freedom of speech and that
their criticism is "McCarthyism."
While she likes to beat on her drum about supposedly growing up in a
Jewish home, there is no evidence that she knows the slightest thing
about Judaism. She claims her "Jewish values" are what drive her to
embrace Palestinian anti-Semites and barbarians. Here she sums up
her own knowledge of Judaism: "As a Jew, I was taught that it was
ethically imperative to speak up and to speak out against arbitrary
state violence." There is no such Jewish ethical imperative. She
clarifies: "There were those who would and could speak out against
state racism and state violence, and it was imperative that we be able
to speak out. Not just for Jews, but for any number of people."
Needless to say, the only "state violence" she feels obliged to
denounce is that supposedly practiced by Israel when it defends its
civilians. She is not exactly outspoken when it comes to the state
violence practiced by Iran or Syria.
As part of Butler's campaign on behalf of Palestinian terrorism, she
likes to wave about the fact that she herself grew up as a "Reform"
Jew. There are very few things wrong with the world that she does not
attribute to the unforgivable desire by Jews for self-determination.
Her attitude towards the Jewish homeland was summed up by her thus:
"The argument that all Jews have a heartfelt investment in the state
of Israel is untrue. Some have a heartfelt investment in corned beef
sandwiches."
When it comes to academic streetwalking on behalf of anti-Semitism and
Palestinian violence, that old adage is true: the Butler did it.

Send condolences!

2011-12-19T07:35:00.000-08:00

1. Send some condolences!

Isracampus Invites you to send Condolences

As you no doubt have heard, Kim Jong II, the goosestepping Stalinist
brat who had been running the North Korean gulag in recent years, just
croaked. Isracampus would like to invite you to send an e-note of
condolence to Noam Chomsky; his email address is chomsky@MIT.edu
Then, please send similar letters of condolence to Israel's own
leading hardcore communists and Stalinists. These include TAU
"historian" Shlomo Sand: shlomosa@post.tau.ac.il; his sidekicks Gadi
Algazi at gadi.algazi@gmail.com and Yoav Peled at pol1@post.tau.ac.il;
Oded Lowenheim, who teaches international relations at the Hebrew
University, at oded.lowenheim@huji.ac.il; Jacob Katriel, retired
Technion Stalinist, at jkatriel@techunix.technion.ac.il; Eyal Nir from
Ben Gurion University, an active communist party member, at
eyalnir@bgu.ac.il; Ofer Cassif, central committee member, at
ofercass@mta.ac.il; and Yuri Pines from the Hebrew University, at
pinesy@mscc.huji.ac.il (if you do not think he is a Stalinist, se his
web page at http://www.eacenter.huji.ac.il/Pines).

PS. As you know, the suffix to web addresses for Israel always end in
.IL. Well, it occurred to me that there are so many communists at
Tel Aviv University that perhaps it should use as its web address
www.Kim.Jong.IL

2. Many on the American Right are pouring out tears at the passing of
Christopher Hitchens. I am one who thinks he was an evil little
bigot. A long-time far-leftist he moved well to the right on many
things. But at the same time he developed from a radical atheist into
a gutter hater of Judaism and Jews, a hater of Israel, and even a
chummy associate of Holocaust Deniers. (There is some debate as to
whether he himself was one.) You can see more about him here:
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2010/12/13/main-feature/1/christopher-hitchenss-jewish-problem

3. Israel's worst academic bimbo:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Haifa%20U%20-%20Dalit%20Baum%20-%20BDS%20and%20lies%20of%20omission.htm

4. Another great scholar from Tel Aviv University:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Chen%20Misgav%20-%20figure%20in%20Queer%20Geography.htm

And yet another one:
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Aeyal%20Gross%20-%20pinkwashing%20claims%20basis%20for%20NYT%20Israel-bashing.htm

Judicial Disgraces in Israel

2011-12-18T12:24:00.001-08:00

1. David Mizrachi has had a tragic life, and then to top it all off
he fell victim to Israel's politicized dual judicial system.

Mizrachi lives in Kiryat Arba, the Jewish town on the outskirts of
Hebron. Five years ago, Mizrachi's daughter, who was the mother of
small children, was mortally injured by a bullet that was accidentally
fired from a weapon. For several weeks she hung on to life, as
Mizrachi nursed her, but in the end died from the injury. Two years
later Mizrachi's own son, who had been born to him when Mizrachi was
quite advanced in age, died in a traffic accident. The cave of
Mahpela in Hebron, not far from his home, is where another Jew is
buried who gave birth to a son only at an advanced age.

After both tragedies, Mizrachi and his wife set up a shop inside a gas
station at the entrance to Kiryat Arba.

Two years ago, just a few months after they lost their son in the
accident, Mizrachi was napping at home when the phone rang. He picked
up the phone and heard hysterical screams from his wife that she was
being attacked and stabbed. A "Palestinian" terrorist had entered the
gas station and stabbed his wife in the neck. Mizrachi raced to the
station, but did not see his wife, and feared for the worst, that she
had been killed. He saw the terrorist who had attacked his wife,
captured and in the custody of several soldiers. Mizrachi climbed
into his car and drove straight at the terrorist, running him over and
injuring his legs. The soldiers took the terrorist to the hospital
and he recovered. Mizrachi's wife also was treated and recovered.
Mizrachi had a nervous breakdown and was incapacitated, unable to
continue to work or run the shop.

Ah, but then in stepped the Israeli Attorney General's office and
decided to prosecute Mizrachi for "attempted homicide." For running
over the terrorist who had just stabbed his own wife. Let us bear in
mind that there have been cases in which Arabs lynched Jewish killers
after they were disarmed and the Arabs were never prosecuted for so
much as jaywalking. The two most famous cases that come to mind are
Baruch Goldstein, who was lynched and killed after being disarmed
following his murderous attack against Arabs in the same Mahpela
shrine, and Eden Natan-Zada, a mentally ill young Jew who killed
several Arabs or Druse in Shfar'am and then was lynched by the mob.

But Mizrachi's case was different. Arabs attacking Jews in Israel are
like dogs biting mailmen and are of little interest to the Prosecution
or to the leftist media. When a Jew attacks an Arab terrorist in
Israel, he (or she) must be prosecuted.

There was some internal debate among the prosecutors. Some wanted
Mizrachi charged with attempted homicide, but he was eventually
formally charged "only" with causing grievous bodily injury. Still
others wanted his emotional state and breakdown taken into account so
he would not be indicted at all. His wife begged in court that he not
be sent to prison, lest it destroy what was left of the man. The
prosecution demanded that he serve a full year of hard prison time.
One of the judges on the panel of three denounced the prosecution for
indicting Mizrachi at all. In the end Mizrachi was sentenced to three
months in prison.

Mizrachi should instead have been granted a medal and the Israel
Prize, maybe even a Nobel Peace Prize. Terrorists should be executed.
They should be lynched. They should be shot and have their carcasses
dumped from choppers into the sea. They should be targeted by drones.
When terrorists are attacked by civilians, especially when those
civilians are themselves victims or relatives of victims of those
terrorists, the "attackers" should have statues erected in their
honor. If a terrorist stabbed a member of my family, I would drive my
car in such a way that "causing injury" would never be a relevant
count in my indictment. My car would NOT have run over the
terrorist's LEGS.

(Above based in part on news story in Besheva weekly newspaper)

2. In another matter of gross judicial stupidity and incompetence,
many of you have perhaps heard of the verdict a few days back against
Israeli writer Naomi Ragen. Let me say that, while I have never met
Naomi face to face, I consider her a great writer, a great Israeli,
and a great Jew. She may be best known for her fiction, but she also
writes some of the best publicist articles coming out of Israel. I am
not exactly the best judge of literary achievement, but she is
generally regarded as one of the best English-language authors of
fiction in Israel (her books have also been translated into Hebrew and
probably other languages). Her books are often about women's roles in
Judaism, and also rich in portrayals of traditional Judaism. Some of
you may be on Naomi's email distribution list for her articles. She
made aliyah from the US 40 years ago and lives in Jerusalem.

Several years back Naomi was sued by one Sarah Shapiro, an
ultra-Orthodox (charedit) woman writer in the US. Shapiro claimed
that Ragen plagiarized material from an earlier book manuscript
written by Shapira. The book by Ragen in question, in which the
"plagiarism" allegedly appears, is something like 450 pages, out of
which there were perhaps 3 or 4 sentences that closely resembled
sentences that appeared in the earlier manuscript by Shapiro. The
"plagiarized" sentences have appeared in the press so I suppose
everyone can read them to make up his or her own mind about them. To
me they look like 3 or 4 similar sentences out of a 450 page book. I
imagine that if you went searching through all the publicist postings
I have posted over the years you could probably find 3 or 4 sentences
that closely resemble sentences in the Koran and conclude that I have
been plagiarizing from the Koran.

Shapiro hired a lawyer. She was later joined by a second plaintiff
making similar charges. The wheels of judicial injustice spin slowly
in Israel, and it took years, until last week, before the court
reached a verdict. It found against Naomi. Of course this is the
same court system that found damages in favor of anti-Semite Neve
Gordon. The court has not yet ruled on how much "damages" it will
order Ragen to pay.

Accusations of "plagiarism" against well known people on the basis of
similarities in phrases, sentences, or themes in writing are not
uncommon. Among other people who have been accused of such
"plagiarisms" have been Alan Dershowitz, whose "plagiarism" has long
been a cause celebre of the radical Left (and for which he was long
ago officially cleared by Harvard), writer Dan Brown, and other
writers and songwriters. The ruling in the Ragen case came out the
very same week in which a Dutch architect designing buildings in South
Korea was accused of designing them as "plagiarized" representation of
the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center being destroyed by
terrorists.

The Ragen court case was complex and I do not pretend to know all of
its details. Nevertheless it is my opinion that the court ruling
against her was a gross injustice and the ruling judge was a fool.
Ragen seems to believe that the entire suit was politically motivated
by some chareidim who were offended by Ragen's own critical portrayal
of chareidi life. Those plaintiffs then found a foolish or
incompetent judge to side with them. Among the reasons for my
skepticism about the motives of the plaintiffs is the fact that the
plaintiffs filed criminal complaints with the police against Naomi's
own husband after he sent them a newspaper clipping about how those
who had sued author Dan Brown for "plagiarism" eventually suffered
significant losses to their estates when the verdict clearing Brown
was issued AFTER the plaintiffs had died, where the damages were
deducted from the property they bequeathed. What is criminal about
sending a newspaper news clipping?

Naomi could use some words of encouragement, so – if you are of such a
mind – you can send her some at nragen@netvision.net.il.

The Mona Lisa Weapon

2011-12-02T05:08:00.000-08:00

Israel's Mona Lisa Weapon
By Steven Plaut

She's unforgettable, she's a legend though...
It's kinda incredible
--- From "Mona Lisa" by Britney Spears

Meet Israel's secret weapon against terrorism, code named "Mona
Lisa." Not only is Mona Lisa an effective weapon against Arab
anti-Israel terrorism and Islamofascism, but also is one of the most
effective weapons in the Israeli arsenal against the guttersnipes
screaming about imaginary "Israel Apartheid." Let us sit back and
watch in amusement as Hitlerjugend from the "Boycott and Divest from
Israel" movement and their fellow jihad travelers try to cope with our
Mona.
There are two critical things you need to know about this new
secret weapon. The first is that Mona Lisa is the real name of an
Israeli woman combat soldier. At her parents' suggestion - she writes
it as a single word, Monalisa (Nat King Cole did the same!). The
second thing you need to know is that she is an Arab.
Monalisa Abdo is a nineteen year old combat soldier in the
Israeli Defense Forces. She serves in one of Israel's elite
anti-terror units. Moreover she wears the legendary red army boots
that only Israel's most elite fighting units wear, the Israeli
equivalents of the American SEALS and green berets. My own military
experiences are timid in comparison with what soldiers do and no one
would ever think of letting me even get near a pair of red combat
boots.
Monalisa grew up in Haifa. Most Israeli Arabs are not
conscripted into the Israeli military, but they may volunteer to serve
if they wish. Some do so out of patriotism and loyalty to the state,
and some do so because of the career benefits and training that will
help them later in the workplace. Monalisa is clearly among the
former. Her story and an interview with her appear in the December 2,
2011 issue of Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper.
She describes the nasty comments some Arabs made to her and her
family members when she signed up. She dismisses them. And her
parents are squarely behind her. "Israeli Arabs need to serve in the
Israeli military," she insists in the interview, "to give to the
country and not just take." Israel is our country and we need to
serve it, she believes. And military service is beneficial for those
who serve, she adds, teaching them discipline and responsibility.
Monalisa's older sister Michelin, age 21, has also decided to enlist
and will start her service in a few days. In the same unit as Mona.
Monalisa not only asked to enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces
but signed up for an elite combat unit named "Karkel," in which both
men and women serve side by side on the front lines. Karkel is the
name of a wild desert cat that lives in Israel's south. The unit is
station in the Arava desert close to the border with Egypt. Hunting
down terrorist infiltrators is its specialty.
She describes her first day in uniform, when she was being
outfitted with equipment and fatigues. The orderlies gave her the
ordinary black combat boots that non-elite soldiers wear. "You gave
me the wrong boots," she insisted, "I demand the red combat boots."
And she got them. She says that when she first put them on, she felt
like a super-model. And while old men like myself are not supposed to
notice such things in 19 year olds, from her photo it is clear she
really could pass for a model if she decided to pursue that instead of
military service.
Since starting her tour of duty, she has taken the
non-commissioned officer training course and is already a NCO. When
asked in the interview how she gets along with the Jewish women
soldiers, she says just great. "There are no differences among us, we
support and help one another."
And about her name. Where did it come from? "My father wanted
me to always walk with pride with my head erect, and it had just that
effect upon me," she explains.
Come to think of it, maybe we have here the most effect
countermeasure yet against the Western campus bashers of Israel, the
anti-Semitic professors, and the jihadi wannabes holding their
anti-Israel protests and whining about Israeli "apartheid." In
reality, Israel is of course the only Middle East state that is NOT an
apartheid regime. Maybe Israel should let loose Monalisa, Michelin,
and the rest of the red-booted fighting tigresses and invite them to
apply those boots to some anti-Israel protester posteriors with
extreme prejudice!

You just might be an "Occupier"

2011-11-30T08:40:00.001-08:00

You just might be an "Occupier"
(from this week's Jewish Press, NY, Dec 2 issue)
By Steven Plaut

Many of us are scratching our heads, and in some cases other parts
of our anatomy, trying to make sense of the "Occupy Wall Street"
movement and its sundry clones around the US and now around the world.
Just what do these urchins really want? What do they think and
believe?

Well, we thought we would recruit Jeff Foxworthy to try to assist
us. Most of you probably are familiar with the great American
comedian from the Deep South. He is best known for his comedy shticks
based on the refrain, "Then you just might be a redneck." For
example, if you have 24 pickup trucks and none of them work, then you
just might be a redneck. That sort of thing.

Well, it occurs to us that Jeff Foxworthy could really clean up if
he altered his shtick slightly to comment on those "who just might be
Wall Street Occupiers."

Here we go:

1. If you dismiss anything you dislike as "neo-liberalism," then you
just might be a Wall Street Occupier. Never be tricked into
attempting to define that nonsense term.
2. If you refuse to recognize the fact that every idea of Marx's was
debunked over 160 years ago, then you just might be a Wall Street
Occupier.
3. If you wear Nike shoes, designer jeans, and carry your smart phone
to the demonstrations against capitalism, then you just might be a
Wall Street Occupier.
4. If you think that REAL communism could really work but it just has
never been tried or tested, you just might be a Wall Street Occupier.
5. If you pretend that you have never heard that communism produces
starvation and cannibalism, then you just might be a Wall Street
Occupier.
6. If you pretend you think the United States controls an empire,
even though you cannot think of any colonies it owns, then you just
might be a Wall Street Occupier.
7. If you think other people must always be required to relinquish
their material things so that you may pursue social justice and feel
idealistic and righteous, then you just might be a Wall Street
Occupier.
8. If you consider your own property to be sacred, while other
people's property should be used for social engineering and doing
good, then you just might be a Wall Street Occupier.
9. If you think it is the main purpose of universities to
indoctrinate students in leftwing ideology, then you just might be a
Wall Street Occupier.
10. If you think shooting terrorists constitutes "war crimes," then
you just might be a Wall Street Occupier.
11. If you favor academic departments in which only enlightened
leftist opinion may be expressed and where there is no room for
non-leftist dissenting opinion to be heard, then you just might be a
Wall Street Occupier.
12. If you believe that the only legitimate way for Israel to defend
its citizens against terrorism is to capitulate to the demands of the
terrorists, then you just might be a Wall Street Occupier.
13. If you believe that eating meat is murder, while partial birth
abortion is not, then you just might be a Wall Street Occupier.
14. If you use the term Islamophobia often, but never use the term
Islamofascism, then you just might be a Wall Street Occupier.
15. If you believe that everything wrong with the world is because of
the United States, and that anything left over that is wrong with the
world is the fault of the Jews, then you just might be a Wall Street
Occupier.
16. If you think there is nothing useful to be learned from the fact
that Cuba used to be the richest country in Latin America and today is
the poorest country in Latin America, then you just might be a Wall
Street Occupier.
17. If you are not aware of the fact that Cubans steal boats to
sneak into the US but no low-income Americans steal boats to sneak
into Cuba, then you just might be a Wall Street Occupier.
18. If you think there is nothing we can learn from comparing the
histories of East Germany with West Germany before the unification, or
North Korean with South Korea, then you just might be a Wall Street
Occupier.
19. If you think that all arguments may be settled by telling a
non-leftist that he
reminds you of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, then you just might be a
Wall Street Occupier.
20. If you claim that the fact that are proportionately more blacks
in prison than whites proves that the courts and police are racist,
but the fact that there are many more males in prison than females is
because males commit more crimes, then you just might be a Wall Street
Occupier.
21. If you support proposals that make real problems of the world
worse, just as long as advocating them makes you feel caring and
righteous, then you just might be a Wall Street Occupier..
22. If you think Israel is an apartheid regime, then you just might
be a Wall Street Occupier.
23. If you prefer that poor people in the Third World starve rather
than that they should embrace capitalism and live like you do, then
you just might be a Wall Street Occupier.
24. If you believe that acts of violence against Jews or Americans
are never terrorism but rather resistance, then you just might be a
Wall Street Occupier.
25. If you think the US itself caused the 9-11 attacks on itself
because of American insensitivity and racism, then you just might be a
Wall Street Occupier.
26. If you believe that terrorism is caused by poverty, then you just
might be a Wall Street Occupier.
27. If you believe that SUVs threaten life on earth, and - more
generally - that the planet is in imminent danger of destruction
unless everyone does what you want them to do, then you just might be
a Wall Street Occupier.
28. If you assert passionately that Marxists care about people, while
Conservatives hate all people and small animals and are not as smart
as leftists, then you just might be a Wall Street Occupier.
29. If you believe that, if one country is rich and another poor, it
must be because the
rich one stole wealth away from the poor one, then you just might be a
Wall Street Occupier.
30. If you demand social justice but have no idea how to define what
it means or explain how to achieve it, then you just might be a Wall
Street Occupier.
31. If you do not think you need to get a job first before you vecome
a leader of the working class, then you just might be a Wall Street
Occupier.

Fwd: Creative Community for Peace

2011-11-30T05:38:00.001-08:00

Shalom, Allow us to introduce ourselves.....

Creative Community for Peace is a non-profit organization headed up by a cross section of the creative world - those who create and help create music, movies, and television programs - and their fans.

We may not all share the same politics or the same opinion on the best path to peace in the Middle East. But we do agree that singling out Israel, the only democracy in the region, as a target of cultural boycotts while ignoring the now-recognized human rights issues of her neighbors will not further peace.

We understand the power that our music, our films, our television shows, and all arts have. They have the power to build bridges. Foster better understanding. Encourage dialogue. And hopefully lead toward greater mutual acceptance.

If anything, turn up the music, expose more of our films and television shows to wider audiences, and encourage people from all cultures to interact and build greater dialogue and understanding.

We are reaching out to those who support the message that the arts can build bridges—please join us in this important mission.

The world might just be a better place for it.

Action

Creative Community for Peace informs artists and their representation to help them make a positive decision to play in Israel in the face of threats and disinformation they often face from activists who seek to boycott Israel. Through interpersonal relationship outreach and a sophisticated website developed to support our message and to counter the arguments of the boycott movement.

We have just launched a social media effort to engage with the vast majority of true fans, via social media, who support this aim.

While artists are in Israel, we help arrange their itinerary so they are able to experience the wonder and diversity of Israel's land and her people.

We monitor boycott activity in an attempt to shine a light on how divisive, one-sided and contrary to peace and peaceful intentions these campaigns are.

We continue to encourage artists to play in Israel both in a personal capacity and as a movement of fans. By doing so, they join a host of top artists who have recently played in Israel, including Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Madonna, Linkin Park, Paul McCartney, The Black Eyed Peas, Bob Dylan and many, many more.

Links

Website: www.CreativeCommunityForPeace.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/CreativeCommunityForPeace

Email: info@creativecommunityforpeace.com

--

Ronny Hatchwell

Israel Coordinator

Creative Community For Peace

Ronny Hatchwell

Israel Coordinator

Creative Community For Peace

Will Israel Ever Get Serious About Treason?

2011-11-23T11:09:00.001-08:00

http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/front-page/will-israel-ever-get-serious-about-treason/2011/11/23/0/

From the Jewish Press (NY)

Will Israel Ever Get Serious About Treason?
By: Steven Plaut
Published: November 23rd, 2011 | Latest update: November 23rd, 2011
Earlier this year Israel passed a law that would strip Israelis of
their citizenship if convicted of espionage or treason. Condemned for
this by countries all over the world, almost all of whom have far
harsher anti-treason laws than Israel, the Israeli government has yet
to apply the law to anyone.

Earlier this year Israel passed a law that would strip Israelis of
their citizenship if convicted of espionage or treason. Condemned for
this by countries all over the world, almost all of whom have far
harsher anti-treason laws than Israel, the Israeli government has yet
to apply the law to anyone.

Sometimes called the "Azmi Bishara Law," it was motivated by the fact
that an Arab member of the Israeli parliament, Azmi Bishara, from one
of the Arab parties, had openly engaged in espionage and treason,
including passing on intelligence to the Hizbullah terrorist
organization while it was firing rockets at Israeli civilians. Bishara
is now in hiding and has yet to be prosecuted.

The Anti-Israel Lobby denounced this law as "racist," just as it
denounces everything Israel does as racist (including rescuing Haitian
earthquake victims). The bleating from Bash-Israel NGO groups about
supposed Israeli "apartheid" sound particularly absurd when one
realizes that Israel is one of the few democracies that has not
utilized mass internment of hostile minority populations that identify
and, in some cases, collaborate with the enemy in time of war. And
Israel has yet to charge any of its extreme leftists with treason, no
matter how brazen their words and deeds.

Treason itself is left undefined under Israeli law, and in general it
has been interpreted by legal authorities in Israel so loosely that
virtually no one has ever been prosecuted for it.

On paper Israeli penal law defines treason as "acts that impair the
integrity of Israel" or "impair its sovereignty," and the granting of
assistance to the enemy during time of war. Based on British law,
Article 99(a) of the Israel Criminal Code states, "If a person with
intent to assist an enemy in war against Israel commits an act
calculated to do so, he is liable to the death penalty or to life
imprisonment."

It should go without saying that no one has ever been sentenced to
either punishment for treason in Israel. Only a few people engaged in
actual espionage – including nuclear spy Mordecai Vanunu and some
old-time spies for the former Soviet Union – have ever even been
charged with treason.

The Israeli law against treason is little more than a joke. Nearly all
the Arabs who sit in the Knesset openly communicate and even
collaborate with the enemies of Israel. They support their agendas and
some have engaged in violence.

There are far left Israeli Jews who work against the sovereignty and
integrity of their own country every day. Examples of this would
include issuing calls for Israel's destruction or declaring support
for international boycotts against Israel. No one has been prosecuted
for any of that.

The Israeli attorney general is quite militant when it comes to
prosecuting right-wing Israeli Jews for "incitement" and "racism,"
including offenders who wear politically incorrect t-shirts or affix
bumper stickers on their cars that some might find in poor taste.

Bear in mind that Israel is in a permanent state of war. Even so,
Israeli Arabs and Jewish leftists never go to jail for collaborating
with the enemy during times of war.

It is instructive and illuminating to examine the history of what
other Western democracies have done with traitors, especially during
times of war.

Many countries have the death penalty for domestic traitors; some of
these anti-treason laws are quite old. Several countries have been
putting teeth into old anti-treason laws recently because of
international terrorism.

Britain's Treason Act, which allowed for the prosecution of British
nationals supporting the enemy in time of war, went back to 1351. One
famous application of the act was the trial of Roger Casement, who was
accused of collaborating with Germany during World War I. There was
debate during the trial over whether the act applied to treason
committed outside Britain or only on British soil. The prosecution
carried the day and the traitor was executed.
Because of court arguments over the punctuation in the act's original
language, it was said that Casement was "hanged by a comma."

The act was also used to prosecute "Lord Haw-Haw," William Joyce, in
1945. Joyce had served as Hitler's radio propagandist, beaming
pro-Nazi messages into Britain during the war.

Churchill's Britain banned not only fascist newspapers and
organizations during World War II but also the communist newspaper The
Daily Worker.

The British Treason Act provided for mandatory execution of traitors.
It distinguished between high treason and petty treason. In both
cases, the traitor was executed, but in the latter cases his property
was not seized by the Crown. Britain executed sixteen traitors under
the Act during World War II.

The act was suspended in 1946 and later repealed. However, Britain has
other laws against treason. Under the British Crime and Disorder Act
of 1998, the punishment for treason is life imprisonment (it had been
death up until that law was passed).

Canada also has a treason act. It distinguishes between high treason
and other forms, with high treason consisting of acts committed during
time of war. The punishment is mandatory life imprisonment.

Australia has a somewhat similar treason law. Turkey, Ireland and
Brazil have treason acts that provide for execution of traitors, as do
many Third World countries.

The United States has had anti-treason laws that allow for execution
of traitors, though these were seldom applied, and similar laws were
once passed by some individual states. The U.S. also has the Espionage
Act of 1917.

French law provides for life imprisonment for treason, as do statutes
in Hong Kong, India and New Zealand.

Switzerland's treason act usually provides for softer punishments, but
in some cases life imprisonment is a possibility.

Germany also has an anti-treason law with punishments up to life
imprisonment for high treason, defined as attempts to overturn the
constitutional order.

Execution and life imprisonment were not the only responses of Western
democracies to internal treason. In 1939 the British government under
Winston Churchill passed Defense Regulation 18B. It suspended habeas
corpus for Nazi sympathizers and allowed for their wholesale
internment without trial. While enemy aliens were interned under other
laws, this law was used to intern British nationals.

The law's provisions for such arrests were very loose. They included
any suspicion that a person represented a danger to Britain or was a
member of any association hostile to Britain or involved in "acts
prejudicial to the public safety or the defense of the realm or in the
preparation or instigation of such acts."

People could be arrested without warning, including those serving in
the British military. About a thousand were so interned in 1940,
though that number was halved by mid-1943. The law was used to jail
pro-German British citizens, including members of the pro-Nazi British
Union of Fascists party, led by Oswald Mosley. Mosley was arrested in
1940, along with his wife, and held in Holloway Prison. In a
controversial move, Churchill released him in November 1943 due to
health problems. Churchill famously ordered the arrest of George
Pitt-Rivers, another British Nazi sympathizer.

The United States passed its first law against enemy aliens and
against treason in the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798. It allowed for
the internment of enemy aliens in time of war. Among those indicted
under it was an American congressman born in Ireland, Matthew Lyon. It
remained on the books, supplemented by the Sedition Act of 1918, an
initiative of President Woodrow Wilson, which was later repealed.

Abraham Lincoln may have been the most aggressive president when it
came to prosecuting and jailing traitors. He ordered the suspension of
habeas corpus in 1861. He used military tribunals and declarations of
martial law liberally. More than 4,200 trials by military commission
were conducted.
"Copperheads" or Americans in the North who identified with the
rebellion in the South were arrested and jailed. One of the more
famous was Clement Laird Vallandigham, who was deported. Other
Copperheads were also deported and stripped of citizenship. Some
traitors were executed. As many as 13,000 people in the North were
rounded up and jailed under martial law. The Union government took
action against newspapers that identified with the rebellion, closing
some. Those expressing opposition to military conscription in the
North were subject to martial law penalties. Under the Confiscation
Act of 1861, the private property of those – not only Southerners –
accused of treason could be seized.

While all belligerents in World War II took action against enemy
aliens and domestic supporters of the enemy, Britain under Churchill
was particularly uncompromising in this area.

There had been about 20,000 German nationals in Britain in 1930, but
this number grew by about 60,000 after Hitler came to power. At the
start of the war these came under scrutiny and surveillance, even
though some of them were Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria. All
Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were called before special
tribunals and divided into three groups:

• "High security risks," who were immediately interned. About 600 fell
under this category.

• "Doubtful cases," who were subject to supervision and restrictions
on their movements. There were around 6,500 of these.

• "No security risk," numbering around 64,000, who were not
restricted. Most of these were Jewish refugees from Nazi oppression.

Britain had historically made liberal use of internment as an
instrument against the enemy, especially during the Boer Wars. The
British intensified their operations against potential spies after
1940, arresting Germans, Austrians and Italians in larger numbers.

On May 12, 1940, more than 2,000 male aliens living in British coastal
areas were arrested under special orders of the Home Secretary. The
Treachery Act passed Parliament that same year and allowed for the
prosecution of any alien suspected of espionage or hostile activity,
and included provision for execution of foreign spies.

Churchill ordered that all 19,000 Italians in Britain be rounded up,
even those who had lived in the UK for decades. Internment camps for
these enemy nationals were set up around Britain, including at Huyton
near Liverpool and in large camps on the Isle of Man. In addition,
over 7,000 suspect aliens were deported, mainly to Canada and
Australia. Tragically, in some cases these included non-British Jews,
for fears that German spies might infiltrate Britain while among them.

Canada interned 80,000 people during World War I. While the massive
internment of Japanese-Americans by the United States during World War
II is well known, less well known is the fact that thousands of ethnic
Japanese were interned by the Canadian government.

Australia also ran internment camps, holding as many as 7,000
Australians, plus thousands of aliens sent there by Britain.

While their numbers were much smaller than those of the interned
Japanese-Americans, hundreds of Italian-Americans were interned by the
U.S. during World War II, and other restrictions were applied to
Italian-Americans who were not interned.

German-Americans were subject to restrictions during World War I; over
6,000 were arrested and more than 2,000 were interned. Some 11,000
alien Germans were interned in the United States during World War II.

Surprisingly, given the pro-Nazi sentiments found among some American
ethnic Germans and the operation in the U.S. of several pro-Nazi
organizations in the 1930s, German-Americans were not interned during
World War II, though some other countries in the Western Hemisphere
did intern domestic ethnic Germans. Small numbers of ethnic Germans
were evicted from sensitive coastal areas of the U.S. After Pearl
Harbor the U.S. outlawed the pro-Nazi German American Bund.
Throughout Europe before and during World War II, the ethnic German
minority populations by and large supported Nazi Germany. After the
war, these Germans were expelled en masse by many of those countries,
including democratic Czechoslovakia, in retaliation for their having
identified with the enemy.

The irony is that Israel's Arab population more openly identifies with
the country's enemies than did any of the groups interned during World
War II by Britain and the other Western democracies. Israeli Arabs on
the whole make little attempt to hide their intense hatred for the
democratic country in which they live, though they rarely seek to move
to any of the 22 countries that have an Arab ethnic majority.

Most (but not all) Israeli Arabs support political parties and groups
that are hostile to the existence of Israel and that openly back
genocidal terrorist groups and Muslim countries that seek Israel's
obliteration.

Israeli far-leftist groups, awash in funding from hostile anti-Israel
foreign governments and organizations, engage in sedition and treason
during time of war, led by Israel's academic tenured Far Left. None of
these have been targeted for prosecution by Israel's legal system or
police.
Why not? Why can Taliban John and Jihad Jane be prosecuted in the U.S.
while traitors in Israel enjoy immunity?

International Call to Close Politics Department at Ben Gurion University

2011-11-23T04:21:00.001-08:00

It is a Cesspool of anti-Israel Extremist Propaganda and Hate!!

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4152161,00.html

Recommendation: Shut down 'leftist' department

Council for Higher Education committee says Ben Gurion University's
Politics Department politically biased. Professor: Some committee
members extreme rightists
Tamar Trabelsi-Hadad

In an unprecedented move, an international committee appointed by the
Council for Higher Education has recommended that the Politics and
Government Department at Ben Gurion University be shut down unless it
addresses some of the problems pointed out by the committee.

According to the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, several of the department's
researchers are considered to be radical leftists. Some of them have
even called for an economic, political and cultural boycott on Israel
due to its "apartheid regime."

The committee, which is headed by Professor Thomas Risse from the Free
University in Berlin, expressed its concern that the department's
political inclinations may be resulting in what it referred to as an
imbalance between the opinions of the faculty members and the
curriculum.

"The political science professors must note that the opinions they are
expressing are personal...so that the students will be exposed to
alternative viewpoints," the reported stated.

The committee said it was also concerned that the "strong emphasis on
political activism may undermine the research of politics as a
scientific field." The report noted that there is a consensus among
the students that the courses offered to them are politically biased.

It should be noted that Committee member Galia Golan, a professor at
the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, said the demand for a more
"balanced" study program is in direct contrast with the principle of
academic freedom, which she called a pillar of higher education.

The committee mentioned additional administrative problems within the
department, and recommended that Ben Gurion University consider
shutting it down unless necessary changes are implemented.

Professor Dani Filc, who heads the department, said "most of the
report's claims are based on empirical mistakes," adding that the
report was part of a "campaign aimed at hurting the most popular
department in Israel."

Filc said the department would accept the committee's recommendation
to hire more faculty members.

Another senior professor at the department attacked the report, saying
"the committee is external, and some of its members have extreme
right-wing political opinions. It published a false report which is
part of a campaign launched by extremist entities to hurt the
department."

In response to the report, Ben Gurion University President Rivka Carmi
said the department is "well-known throughout the world and claimed it
had been "put under a magnifying glass." She called the report "much
ado about nothing."

Addressing the report's claims, Carmi said some students believe the
department is politically biased, while others say it taught them to
think for themselves.

Peace Through Victory

2011-11-10T03:39:00.001-08:00

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/10/peace-through-victory-%e2%80%93-give-victory-a-chance/

Peace Through Victory

Posted By Steven Plaut On November 10, 2011

By now, Israel, at the urging and bullying of the world, has tried
pretty much every conceivable idea and option for achieving
tranquility and reconciliation with the Hamas, except for one. Israel
removed its army and civilian population from the Gaza Strip. In what
amounted to the first ethnic self-cleansing in history, Israel evicted
the entire Jewish presence in Gaza. The entire area was turned over
to the Palestinians, lock, stock, barrel, and Jew-free.

The result is of course known. The Hamas immediately converted all of
Gaza into a large rocket launch pad and a base for initiating
terrorist attacks against Israel. It kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad
Shalit and held him incommunicado, refusing medical treatment to him,
even though his arm was filled with shrapnel. Israel in response
provided free electricity and water to the Gazans and sent civilian
supplies into Gaza. Israel never made any serious efforts to stop the
massive tunnel smuggling into Gaza from Egypt, even when it was clear
that the main item being smuggled was weapons. These smuggled weapons
include bomb materials and sophisticated rockets that can now reach
Tel Aviv. Israel responded to the endless rocket attacks against its
own civilians by turning the other cheek. Only after 8000 rocket
strikes did it launch the half-hearted symbolic retaliation in the
"Cast Lead" campaign, withdrawing quickly after it was launched.

There is only one strategy for dealing with the Hamas that Israel has
never attempted. That untried strategy is victory. Israel has never
seriously attempted to achieve peace and tranquility with the Gaza
Palestinians by means of victory. This is somewhat strange, since it
is hard to think of any other war that did not end in peace only after
victory. Instead, the world keeps demanding that Israel respond to
Hamas provocation with an endless series of one-sided "goodwill
measures." Never mind that the only invariable effect of such Israeli
"goodwill measures" has been to trigger more Hamas terrorism. The
only "peace settlement" the Hamas is interested in is one in which
Israelis volunteer to allow themselves to be placed in Hamas-run
extermination camps for Jews.

Victory in the case of the war with the Gaza terrorists would mean
annihilating the Hamas. Interestingly, there is an increasing chorus
of voices inside Israel now calling for peace through victory. One of
these is General Dan Halutz, the controversial erstwhile chief of
staff of the Israeli army. A few days ago a Hamas rocket was fired
into Israel and struck a school building. In response, Halutz called
for a "mortal blow" to be dealt to the Hamas' civilian and "military"
leadership. Then, in a radio interview, Halutz said, "We must bring
back our deterrence vis-à-vis Gaza. It has not existed for even one
moment since Operation Cast Lead and to this day." He has been joined
by other Israeli leaders. The finance minister, Yuval Steinitz (who
is a philosophy professor at my own university when he is not busy in
public life), recently called on Israel to topple the Hamas "regime"
in Gaza if the terror continues.

The terrorist aggression by the Hamas has been carried on nonstop ever
since it seized power in Gaza. Most acts of Hamas barbarism do not
even get reported in the world media, for which dogs biting and
shooting rockets at postmen are passé. Hamas rockets land in Israeli
civilian areas almost every day. Hamas leaders continue to call
openly for Israel's obliteration and for the annihilation of Jews.
All this is surprising only for those who have no understanding of
what the Hamas really is. Anyone who has read the brochure on the
Hamas being distributed by the David Horowitz Freedom Center will know
otherwise.

It has become vogue in many circles to represent Middle East savagery
as part of some sort of "War of Civilizations." It is not. In fact,
the Middle East is simply a war by barbarism against all civilization.
It is also considered chic to represent the Middle East conflict as a
"cycle of violence," and as something fundamentally symmetrical
between Arab terrorists and Israeli soldiers. It is not.

The entire world has convinced itself that violence and terrorism in
the Middle East are the results of Israeli "occupation" over Arabs.
They are wrong. If there is one thing that has become glaringly
obvious in the past two decades it is that the main cause of terrorist
violence in the Middle East is the removal of Israeli occupation over
Arabs. The Gaza violence was not caused by Israeli occupation but by
its removal. The Hezbollah violence and threats from Lebanon were not
caused by Israeli "occupation" of Southern Lebanon but rather by its
removal.

Part of the world's problem in understanding such things about the
Middle East is that most people have no idea how small Israel really
is. Without the West Bank, Israel is at its waist about as wide as
the length of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. All of the West Bank is
smaller than the Everglades. The Arab world insists territory
controlled from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf is insufficient
for its appetites, but promises that if only Israel agrees to place
its neck in a strategic hangman's noose by turning over the West Bank
to the PLO/Hamas, then peace will prevail. And if Israel refuses to
place its neck in such an Arab noose voluntarily, then this shows that
Israeli aggression is what is behind the violence.

The caterwauling against Israel's decision to shoot back occasionally
at the terrorists is coming from those claiming that Israel was
erected on "Palestinian lands." This is like claiming that Alaska
sits on Russian lands. The Arabs briefly controlled Palestine
militarily, as the Russians briefly owned Alaska. The Jews and not
the Arabs are analogous to the native Eskimos. Israeli settlements
are about as "illegal" as are Eskimo villages in Alaska. There has
never ever in history been a Palestinian state, and there is no such
thing as a Palestinian people, any more than there is a separate Rhode
Islander people. The fact of the matter is that the West Bank and Gaza
are hardly "Palestinian lands."

Even if anyone thinks the Palestinians might have had some legitimate
claim to statehood or sovereignty, the Palestinians forfeited any such
right they might have had due to the past century of Palestinian
atrocities and terror. Just like the Sudeten Germans lost their claim
to any sort of self-determination. True, Israeli governments have
nevertheless naively and foolishly offered to allow the Palestinians
to exercise control over these territories in exchange for peace. But
Israel got war and mass murder of its civilians in exchange, not
peace, so the foolhardy Oslo "peace process" deals are now off and
should never have been implemented. Proposals to "liberate" the West
Bank and end Israeli "occupation" there are nothing more than demands
that Israel allow Gazan barbarism and terrorism to be replicated and
cloned in the West Bank, with Israeli citizens subsequently bathed in
countless thousands of rockets.

The only real way to suppress the carnage is for Israel to re-occupy
Gaza and the West Bank in full, implement open-ended military control
there and a long-term program of Denazification (based in part on the
Allied programs at the end of World War II). Israel needs to expel the
terrorists and destroy their infrastructure. It needs to get serious
about shooting terrorists. Everything else is wishful thinking and
delusion.

Palestinian "suffering"? If the Palestinians are unhappy with
Israeli anti-terror policies, retaliations, checkpoints and military
incursions, let them stop the terror and desist from murdering
Israelis, or let them move to any of the 22 Arab states. As long as
they persist in the violence, any "suffering" by Palestinians is, much
like the suffering of Germans and Japanese during World War II, their
own fault. The solution is certainly not for Israel to stop resisting
the terror, to stop fighting back, nor for Israel to desist from
trying to protect its citizens.

The endless post-Oslo Middle East violence and terror was triggered
because Israel indicated that it was on the run, exhausted, unwilling
to fight, afraid to resist, and ready to capitulate. It will end only
when Israel returns to its determination to end the terror through
military victory and force of arms. The same United States that has
understood that there is only a military option for dealing with
terror in Iraq and Afghanistan must back up such a return by Israel to
pre-Oslo sanity.

There are no non-military solutions to the problems of terrorism.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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The Histadrut declares War against Israelis

2011-11-07T06:43:00.001-08:00

The Histadrut's War against the Israeli Public
By Steven Plaut

"Israel's most justified strike ever," gushed the Jewish Palestinians
over at leftwing Haaretz newspaper. It is a fight for social
justice, chimed in the other media airheads. The students from the
tent protests agree.

Israel's Histadrut trade union federation once again proved itself
this past week as deserving of the moniker I have long attached to it:
The Histadrut is Israel's most important organized crime family. If
only for a few hours before a "Labor Court" issued back-to-work orders

The Histadrut regularly shuts down the country, striking against the
Israeli public by closing vital services. For years Israel has lost
enormous amounts of business deals because business people are afraid
to come to Israel. They are not afraid of the terrorists. They are
afraid of the Histadrut shutting down the airport, stranding them,
making them "Prisoners of Zion, as one wag suggested they be called.
The strikes also sabotage the public transit, the banks, and other
services. Histadrut terrorism in the form of anti-public "sanctions"
takes an enormous economic toll every year.

So just what was the Histadrut so upset over THIS TIME? What was the
cause of its decision to cripple the country in a general strike, one
it threatened would go on indefinitely with no time limit?

The Histadrut was upset that so many Israelis were finding work
through private manpower agencies.

What is so bad about that? The second most important goal of the
Histadrut is to price Israeli workers out of the market so that those
workers cannot get any work at all. The first most important goal is
to serve as the economic SWAT team for the rump Labor Party to help
get it into power and replace the Likud.

Let me explain. There are lots of Israelis, mainly low-skilled
Israelis, who find work through "manpower" agencies. The big
attraction for them to work this way is that they get their entire
salary as salary, without being forced to relinquish large chunks of
it in order for the funds to be sidelined into pension funds,
"provident funds," and other "social savings" schemes. Don't the
workers realize that they will someday be old and need a pension? Of
course they do, but they are now in a period of their lives where they
need the cash more. Many "manpower agency" employees are Russian
immigrants, new in the country. The "agencies" also help find work
for their stable of workers and assist in other ways, for a cut.
Employers favor the system because they are not required to grant
permanent "tenure" to the employees after a few months and can hire
and fire when and whom they please. Through much of the Israeli
economy, especially the public sector, it is far more difficult to
fire a janitor than a tenured professor, even if the janitor is
insubordinate, reckless, or lazy.

My mother uses home helpers provided through manpower agencies. She
is one of those evil tycoons and oligarchs that the Histadrut is
striking against this week. She is 84.
The workers and my mom love the arrangement.

No one is forcing anyone to work through the "manpower agencies."
People choose to do so because the alternative is in many cases not
finding work at all. The Histadrut claims to be battling to "protect"
these "exploited workers," those the Histadrut claims are being worked
like slave laborers. The way the Histadrut wants them protected is
to make hiring them much more expensive. If successive, this will
ensure that many of the "manpower agency employees" are forced into
permanent joblessness.

Let me add that the Histadrut in general seeks to price workers out of
the labor market. The Histadrut represents the pampered and skilled
and higher-paid unionized workers in Israel: the overpaid workers in
the Israeli Electric Company, the overpaid port workers, the medical
doctors, and of course overpaid public servants. The way it protects
its constituents is by seeking to make hiring unskilled workers, who
in a sense are the competition for Histadrut constituents, so
expensive that they will not be hired. Hence employers will need to
substitute skilled Histadrut union employees for the many unskilled
workers priced out of work. This is why the Histadrut always has lead
the campaign to raise the minimum wage. As anyone who has taken
freshman economics knows, one of the main causes of unemployment in
Western economies is the minimum wage. If the Histadrut had its way,
it would raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour, ensuring that
unskilled workers could never get any jobs at all, and so all
employers would have to hire more skilled workers and boost THEIR
wages. The Histadrut jihad against "manpower agency" workers is
driven by the same aims.

That and the passionate desire to sabotage the country so that people
will blame Netanyahu and the Likud and then maybe bring the Labor
Party socialists back to power.

There is one other entity to blame. It is the Likud. Since 1977 the
Likud has held power more often than it has not. And it has done
almost nothing to end the Histadrut terrorism. No Reagan-like
anti-union determinism. Reagan's courage broke the back of the union
extortionists in the US (remember the air traffic controllers strike?)
and produced unprecedented economic growth. The growth in the
American economy under Reagan produced incremental economic value and
production greater than the size of the entire German economy.

But not the Likud and not Netanyahu. The same appeasements so beloved
by them as a tactic for dealing with the terrorists and the Arab
fascists is pretty much the way they have always handled the
Histadrut.

Inventors of the Lies about a "Zionist Lobby Cabal" now linked to Holocaust Denier

2011-11-06T01:19:00.001-07:00

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/97030/atzmon-wandering-who-anti-semitism-israel?page=0,0

Why are John Mearsheimer and Richard Falk Endorsing a Blatantly
Anti-Semitic Book?
Alan Dershowitz
November 4, 2011 | 12:00 am
.As the discourse about Israel on university campuses continues to
degenerate, there is growing concern that some of Israel's most vocal
detractors are crossing a red line between acceptable criticism of
Israel and legitimizing anti-Semitism. The recent endorsements by
several internationally prominent academics—including John Mearsheimer
of the University of Chicago and Richard Falk of Princeton—of an
overtly anti-Semitic book written by a notorious Jew-hater illustrate
this dangerous trend.

The book in question is entitled The Wandering Who? and was written by
Gilad Atzmon, a British jazz musician. Lest there be any doubt about
Atzmon's anti-Semitic credentials, listen to his self-description in
the book itself. He boasts about "drawing many of my insights from a
man who … was an anti-Semite as well as a radical misogynist" and a
hater of "almost everything that fails to be Aryan masculinity"
(89-90). He declares himself a "proud, self-hating Jew" (54), writes
with "contempt" of "the Jew in me" (94), and describes himself as "a
strong opponent of … Jewish-ness" (186). His writings, both online and
in his new book, brim with classic anti-Semitic motifs that are
borrowed from Nazi publications:

Throughout his writings, Atzmon argues that Jews seek to control the world:

· "[W]e must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people
are trying to control the world very seriously."

· "American Jewry makes any debate on whether the 'Protocols of
the elder of Zion' [sic] are an authentic document or rather a forgery
irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy."

Atzmon expands on this theme in The Wandering Who?, repeatedly
conflating "the Jews" and "the Zionist":

· He calls the recent credit crunch "the Zio-punch" (22) and says
it was not "a Jewish conspiracy" because "it was all in the open"
(30).

· Paul Wolfowitz, Rahm Emmanuel, and other members of "the Jewish
elite" remain abroad instead of moving to "Zion" because they "have
proved far more effective for the Zionist cause by staying where they
are" (19).

· The American media "failed to warn the American people of the
enemy within" because of money (27).

Atzmon has written that Jews are evil and a menace to humanity:

· "With Fagin and Shylock in mind Israeli barbarism and organ
trafficking seem to be just other events in an endless hellish
continuum."

· "The Homo Zionicus quickly became a mass murderer, detached from
any recognised form of ethical thinking and engaged in a colossal
crime against humanity."

Atzmon rehearses many of these ideas in The Wandering Who?:

· "[T]o be a Jew is a deep commitment that goes far beyond any
legal or moral order" (20) and this commitment "pulls more and more
Jews into an obscure, dangerous and unethical fellowship" (21).

· If Iran and Israel fight a nuclear war that kills tens of
millions of people, "some may be bold enough to argue that 'Hitler
might have been right after all'" (179).

Atzmon regularly urges his readers to doubt the Holocaust and to
reject Jewish history:

· "It took me years to accept that the Holocaust narrative, in its
current form, doesn't make any historical sense. … If, for instance,
the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein—free of Jews),
or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched
hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the
war?"

· "[E]ven if we accept the Holocaust as the new Anglo-American
liberal-democratic religion, we must allow people to be atheists."

Atzmon reprises some of this language in The Wandering Who?:

· Children should be allowed to question, as he did, "how the
teacher could know that these accusations of Jews making Matza out of
young Goyim's blood were indeed empty or groundless" (185).

· "The Holocaust religion is probably as old as the Jews themselves" (153).

· The history of Jewish persecution is a myth, and if there was
any persecution the Jews brought it on themselves (175, 182).

Atzmon argues that Jews are corrupt and responsible for "why" they are "hated":

· "[I]n order to promote Zionist interests, Israel must generate
significant anti-Jewish sentiment. Cruelty against Palestinian
civilians is a favourite Israeli means of achieving this aim."

· "Jews may have managed to drop their God, but they have
maintained goy-hating and racist ideologies at the heart of their
newly emerging secular political identity. This explains why some
Talmudic goy-hating elements have been transformed within the Zionist
discourse into genocidal practices."

Atzmon returns to this theme repeatedly in The Wandering Who?:

· The "Judaic God" described in Deuteronomy 6:10-12 "is an evil
deity, who leads his people to plunder, robbery and theft" (120).
Atzmon explains that "Israel and Zionism … have instituted the plunder
promised by the Hebrew God in the Judaic holy scriptures" (121).

· The moral of the Book of Esther is that Jews "had better
infiltrate the corridors of power" if they wish to survive (158).

Finally, Atzmon repeatedly declares that Israel is worse than the
Nazis and has actually "apologized" to the Nazis for having earlier
compared them to Israel:

· "Many of us including me tend to equate Israel to Nazi Germany.
Rather often I myself join others and argue that Israelis are the
Nazis of our time. I want to take this opportunity to amend my
statement. Israelis are not the Nazis of our time and the Nazis were
not the Israelis of their time. Israel, is in fact far worse than Nazi
Germany and the above equation is simply meaningless and misleading."

In light of this Der Stürmer-like bigotry against Jews, it should come
as no surprise that even some of the most hard-core anti-Israel
activists have shunned Atzmon out of fear that his anti-Semitism will
discredit their cause. Tony Greenstein, a self-styled "anti-Zionist"
who recently participated in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's
unprecedented disruption of an Israel Philharmonic Orchestra concert
in London (which Greenstein compared to protesting the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1930s), denounced The Wandering Who? as
"a poisonous anti-Semitic tome." Sue Blackwell, who co-wrote the
Association of University Teachers' motion to boycott Israeli
universities in 2005, removed all links to Atzmon from her website and
placed Atzmon on her list of "nasties" along with David Irving and
Israel Shamir. Socialist Worker, a website that frequently refers to
Israeli "apartheid" and publishes articles with titles such as
"Israel's murderous violence," removed an interview with Atzmon and
called the evidence of Atzmon's anti-Semitism "damning." At least ten
authors associated with the Leftist publisher that published The
Wandering Who? have called on the publisher to distance itself from
Atzmon's views, explaining that the "thrust of Atzmon's work is to
normalise and legitimise anti-Semitism."

Hard-core neo-Nazis, racists, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, on
the other hand, have happily counted Atzmon as one of their own. David
Duke, America's premier white supremacist, has posted more than a
dozen of Atzmon's articles on his website over the past five years and
recently praised Atzmon for "writ[ing] such fine articles exposing the
evil of Zionism and Jewish supremacism." Kevin MacDonald, a professor
at Cal State Long Beach whose colleagues formally disassociated
themselves from his "anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views,"
called Atzmon's book "an invaluable account by someone who clearly
understands the main symptoms of Jewish pathology." Israel Shamir, a
Holocaust denier ("We must deny the concept of Holocaust without doubt
and hesitation") who argues that Jews ritually murdered Christian
children for their blood and that "The rule of the Elders of Zion is
already upon us," refers to Atzmon as a "good friend" and calls Atzmon
one of "the shining stars of the battle" against "the Jewish
alliance."

But neither Atzmon's well-established reputation for anti-Semitism nor
the copious anti-Semitic filth that fills The Wandering Who? has
deterred Professors John Mearsheimer and Richard Falk from actively
endorsing Atzmon's work. Mearsheimer, the Harrison Distinguished
Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago
and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, calls The
Wandering Who? a "fascinating" book that "should be read widely by
Jews and non-Jews alike." Falk, Milibank Professor of International
Law Emeritus at Princeton University and United Nations Special
Rapporteur on "human rights in the Palestinian territories," calls The
Wandering Who? an "absorbing and moving" book that everyone who
"care[s] about real peace" should "not only read, but reflect upon and
discuss widely." Falk's endorsement appears prominently on the cover
of Atzmon's book. Mearsheimer's endorsement is featured on its first
page. These professors are not merely defending Atzmon's right to
publish such a book; they are endorsing its content and urging their
colleagues, students, and others to read and "reflect upon" the views
expressed by Atzmon. One wonders which portions of this bigoted screed
Professors Mearsheimer and Falk believe their students and others
"should" read and "discuss widely."

Mearsheimer has defended his endorsement (on Stephen Walt's blog) by
questioning whether his critics have even read Atzmon's book. Well,
I've read every word of it, as well as many of Atzmon's blogs. No one
who has read this material could escape the conclusion—which Atzmon
freely admits—that many of his "insights" are borrowed directly from
classic anti-Semitic writings. Mearsheimer claims, however, that he
has endorsed only Atzmon's book and not his other writings. But the
book itself is filled with crass neo-Nazi rants against the "Jew,"
"World Jewry," and "Jewish bankers." He claims that "robbery and
hatred is imbued in Jewish modern political ideology on both the left
and the right" (123). And like other anti-Semites, Atzmon is obsessed
in the book with Jewish names. It was Jews, such as Wolfowitz and
Libby, who pushed the United States into war against Iraq in the
"interests" of "their beloved Jewish state" (26). "How is it that
America failed to restrain its Wolfowitzes?" Atzmon asks (27).

Likewise, according to Atzmon's book, it was "Jewish bankers,"
financiers, economists, writers, and politicians such as Greenspan,
Levy, Aaronovitch, Saban, Friedman, Schiff, and Rothschild who have
caused the economic and political problems of the world, ranging from
the Bolshevik revolution to the wars of the 20th century to the
current economic troubles (27,194). And like other classic
anti-Semites, Atzmon doesn't simply fault the individual Jews he
names; he concocts a worldwide Jewish conspiracy motivated by a
"ruthless Zio-driven" (27) "Jewish ideology" (69) that finds its
source in "the lethal spirit" (122) of the Hebrew Bible. This sort of
conspiratorial drivel is borrowed almost word for word from the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion—the Czarist forgery that became a
staple of Nazi propaganda.

A number of other prominent academics have defended Atzmon and his
endorsers. Brian Leiter, the Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at
the University of Chicago Law School, dismissed the reaction to the
book and to Mearsheimer's "straightforward" endorsement as
"hysterical" and not "advanc[ing] honest intellectual discourse,"
though he acknowledges not having read Atzmon's book. On the basis of
having perused one brief interview with Atzmon, Leiter is nonetheless
prepared to defend him against charges that he is an anti-Semite or a
Holocaust denier: "His positions [do not mark him] as an anti-Semite
[but rather as] cosmopolitan. … He does not deny the Holocaust or the
gas chambers… ." Leiter should read the book, especially pages
175-176, before leaping to Atzmon's defense. There Atzmon reflects
"that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled
to start asking questions. We should ask for historical evidence and
arguments rather than follow a religious narrative that is sustained
by political pressure and laws."

James Petras, Bartle Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Binghamton
University, called The Wandering Who? "a series of brilliant
illuminations" and praised Atzmon's "courage." The list of academics
who have endorsed Atzmon also includes William A. Cook, a professor of
English at the University of La Verne in southern California; Makram
Khoury-Machool, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge; and Oren
Ben-Dor of the University of Southampton School of Law.

These endorsements represent a dangerous step toward legitimizing
anti-Semitic rhetoric on university campuses. If respected professors
endorse the views contained in Atzmon's book as "brilliant,"
"fascinating," "absorbing," and "moving," these views—which include
Jewish domination of the world, doubting the Holocaust, blaming "the
Jews" for being so hated, and attributing the current economic
troubles to a "Zio-punch"—risk becoming acceptable among their
students. These endorsements of Atzmon's book are the best evidence
yet that academic discourse is beginning to cross a red line, and that
the crossing of this line must be exposed, rebutted, and rejected in
the marketplace of ideas and in the academy. (Another evidence of this
academic trend in Europe appeared recently on Atzmon's website, where
he brags that he has been invited to "give a talk on ethics at the
Trondheim University" in Norway. This is the same university whose
faculty refused to invite me to speak about the Arab-Israel conflict.)

Accordingly, I hereby challenge Professors Mearsheimer and Falk to a
public debate about why they have endorsed and said such positive
things about so hateful and anti-Semitic a book by so bigoted and
dishonest a writer.

Alan Dershowitz is a professor at Harvard Law School.
.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please note also that Atzmon's followers are some of the central
figures participating in teh "ALEF" chat list operated by the
University of Haifa. For details, go here:
http://isracampus.org.il/ALEF%20Watch.htm

Professors of Hate

2011-11-04T00:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10778

Israeli Professors of Hate

From the 1970s, Israel's universities had become home to a new
generation of leftist intellectuals who demonize Israel and the
undermine the struggle for survival of the Jewish people.
From Giulio Meotti
When in 2007 Professor Hillel Weiss of Bar Ilan University was
captured on film cursing the IDF regional commander during the
expulsion of Hebron's Jewish residents, the well- known scholar, a
leading expert on the works of Nobel Laureate author Shai Agnon, was
pulverized in the Israeli media.

The public opinion later discovered that Weiss' anger was the
reasonable reaction of a father protesting against the (twice)
eviction of his children and grandchildren from their homes.

Weiss didn't call on anyone to act upon his words. He called upon G-d.
But Professor Weiss is a patriarch of the right wing movement.

Somehow, the Israeli media doesn't pay the same attention to the
legion of Israeli professors and lecturers from the Jewish Left who
daily take the side of Israel's existential enemies.

From the 1970s, Israel's universities had become home to a new
generation of leftist intellectuals who demonize Israel and the
undermine the struggle for survival of the Jewish people.

A study by Im Tirtzu claimed that more than 90% of the allegations of
"Israeli war crimes" cited in the shameful Goldstone Report were
provided by 16 NGOs who received close to $8 million from the New
Israel Fund between 2006 and 2008, an organization headed by former
Meretz MK Professor Naomi Chazan.

A few days ago, a criminal investigation was opened against Dr. Ayal
Nir, a lecturer at Ben- Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, over a
status on his Facebook page in which he called to "break the necks of
right-wing activists".  It's an open call for murder of those who
reject his far-leftist opinions.

Today there is a predominance of Israeli academics within the NGOs
that discredit Israel, such as Gush Shalom, B'Tselem, Yesh Gvul, the
Committee to Stop Demolition of Houses in Palestine and the Committee
to Stop Torture.

Steve Plaut has just drawn up a thorough list of them for the Middle
East Quarterly.

The phenomenon goes back to Karl Marx, whose anti-Semitic diatribes
were reflected in outbursts like "money is the jealous god of Israel,
by the side of which no other god may exist... The social emancipation
of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism".

Whether it is Professor Shlomo Sand, who achieved celebrity status in
Europe by publishing a book denying the existence of the Jewish
people, or Professor Oren Yiftachel, who called Israel "a white...
pure settlement colonial society", these Israeli celebrities gained
fame and fortune by trashing their own country and people.

The same phenomenon happened in czarist Russia, when some Jewish
social agitators endorsed pogroms against their own kinsmen, hoping
that by venting their frustrations on Jews, the masses would
ultimately turn on the czar.

At the Ben-Gurion University, Neve Gordon accused the IDF of being
"war criminals" and promoted the boycott of Israel in a Los Angeles
Times editorial. Gordon's articles have also been published on the web
site of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel and in Iran's state media.

Ze'ev Sternhell, in the midst of the Second Intifada, when his own
students were being butchered on buses and restaurants, declared that
Palestinians should "concentrate their struggle against the
settlements".

In May 2001, after Arabs sadistically bashed the skulls of two
"settler kids" in Tekoa, Israeli psychiatrist Ruchama Marton declared
that "the settlers raise little monsters".

Anat Matar of Tel Aviv University openly supported boycotts of her own
university. You find professors such as Moshe Zimmermann and other
members of the progressive community who compared the Israelis to the
Nazis. Also professors such as Idith Zertal, who thinks that the
Zionist absorption of Holocaust refugees was a form of rape.

In May 2001, after Arabs sadistically bashed the skulls of two
"settler kids" in Tekoa, Israeli psychiatrist Ruchama Marton declared
that "the settlers raise little monsters".
Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, whose anti-Semithic book "The
Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" has become a bible for
Israel-bashers in the West,, in 2008 were allowed to deliver a lecture
at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

University of Haifa political science professor Ilan Pappe brackets
Israelis with Nazis and urges academics to delegitimize Israel. Ran
Hacohen from Tel Aviv University described "Israel as fulfilling
Hitler's dream" and referred to the assassination of Hamas leader and
inciter to murder, Ahmed Yassin, as "a milestone in the process of the
barbarization of mankind".

Lev Grinberg, director of the Humphries Institute for Social Research
at Ben-Gurion University, accused the Israeli government, in a Belgian
media, of "state terrorism".

These Israeli academics abuse academic freedom by utilizing their
universities as launching pads to delegitimize their own country and
people. The extreme damage to Israel's reputation and Jewish identity
inflicted by these and other Jewish intellectuals has been greatly
underestimated.

Indeed, with their words and actions, they are boosting pernicious and
deadly Judeophobic propaganda.

Tenured Treason - Article from Ami Magazine November 2011

2011-11-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

The article is attached here in PDF format. I think it will interest you.

I was unable to access it in simple text for a smaller file. If it is
too large for your server, please delete with my apology.

Bamba

2011-11-01T02:20:00.001-07:00

1. I inadvertently sent a message yesterday where the address list
was showing. Sorry, I am getting old! Please delete and do not use
that list for sending out messages.

2. A couple of days ago I sent out a posting about Tel Aviv
University's airhead philosophy faculty member, Anat Matar, and her
celebrating the release of mass murderers and terrorists as a great
reason to party. She also defended a terrorist's tossing a grenade
at a bus full of soldiers. Her own son of course was not on that bus
because he was convicted and did jail time for refusing to serve in
the Israeli army.

The same bimbette is in the media today (Hebrew only:
http://www.news1.co.il/Archive/001-D-280634-00.html ), where she is
essentially saying that there was nothing very objectionable to the
Hamas kidnapping and holding Gilad Shalit incommunicado for so long
because Shalit was "not shooting Bamba from his tank," in her words.

Now for those of you not familiar with the product, one of the great
cultural achievements of Israel is "Bamba" - a high-calorie snack with
peanut butter in the center, which no teenager watching South Park on
television can resist eating.

Of course, Tel Aviv University still needs to explain why they have
given tenure in the philosophy department to a traitor who has Bamba
between her ears.

I would like to call hereby on the Im Tirtzu student activists to go
to the classes of Matar at TAU and to throw Bamba at her.

3. I was just sent a really funny cartoon, which I was unable to
upload onto this message, so let me just tell you what it showed. You
see a Jewish man with a beard speaking into his cell phone as he is
walking down the street and telling his customer, "And not to worry.
If there are any problems with this, I am available to resolve
problems and help 24-6."

I thought that was cute.

Tunisia Issues Warrant for Suha Arafat

2011-10-31T11:24:00.001-07:00

As you know, pig farmers in the American Midwest call their pigs home
with the yell, "SUUUHAAA! SUUUHAAAAAA!"

You recall Suha Arafat giving a public speech in which she claimed
Jews poison Palestinian wells, and Hillary Clinto applauded her? (See
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123594610114604391.html and
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/01/13/bill_clintons_policies_may_echo_at_hearing/?page=full
)

Well:

http://www.israellycool.com/2011/10/31/the-downfall-of-sewer-arafat/
(see attached photos on that page)

The Downfall of Sewer Arafat?
Aussie Dave | Oct 31, 2011 | 0 comments

This little piggy went to market.

This little piggy stayed at home

This little piggy had an arrest warrant issued against her..

Suha Arafat, widow of late PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, is wanted by
officials in Tunisia for alleged corruption, AFP reported on Monday.

Tunisian Justice Ministry spokesman Kadhem Zine al Abidine told the
French news agency that a warrant was issued for the 48-year-old
Arafat, who was a citizen of Tunisia, until her citizenship was
stripped in 2007.

The allegations go back to a 2006 business deal, when Suha Arafat had
a fallout with former first lady of Tunisia over the establishment of
an international school in Tunis, AFP quoted Tunisian newspapers as
saying.

In 2007, Suha was declared persona non grata in Tunisia and had her
citizenship revoked, reportedly by presidential decree. Suha was
reported to be living in Malta, at least several months a year, where
she owns a home.

Since the ouster of former Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali,
a number of former regime officials have been charged with corruption.

Pino Jihada

2011-10-31T02:19:00.001-07:00

1. http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/31/pino-jihada/

Pino Jihada

Posted By Steven Plaut On October 31, 2011 @ 12:08 am In Daily
Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments

For those of us old enough to be AARP members, the name "Kent State"
conjures up memories of the killings of 4 Kent State students on May
4, 1970 in an over-reaction by Ohio State Guardsmen positioned on the
campus during anti-war protests.

This past week Kent State gained a new basis for international
notoriety and for a different sort of death, this time of academic
standards and decency. Kent State is home to one of the worst tenured
jihadists and pseudo-academic barbarians on the planet.

Julio Pino is a tenured pseudo-academic, teaching Latin American
history at Kent State. He was born in Cuba in 1960 and is a proud
Fidelista, although he seems to prefer the option of having three
square meals to eat in the heartland of American capitalism to living
in the workers' paradise. In 2000 he converted to Islam and adopted
the new name, Assad Jibril Pino. Since then he has been a
professional anti-Semite and rabble rouser against Israel. He
routinely denounces Israel for perpetuating "genocide" and Nazi-like
crimes. (He evidently has never found any crimes in Cuba committed by
the communists there, nor any human rights abuses of Muslims in Muslim
regimes.) He proudly admits to being a full-time indoctrinator of
his students at Kent State. He has referred to his students at Kent
State as his "little jihadists" and his "beloved Taliban." He insists
that the United States is "rapidly descending toward Christian
fascism, we need more Ward Churchills." In September 2000, Pino
declared a fatwa on the moderator of the "Marxism List," proclaiming
that those who dared to disagree with him were "hereby sentenced to
death." He routinely celebrates mass murderers and suicide bombers,
including the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked the US on 9-11. The
Kent State student paper has had some biting satire to say about all
this.

Pino was in the news this past week for academic barbarism. An
Israeli diplomat was speaking at Kent State and Pino jumped up and
interrupted the talk by screaming "Death to Israel." Pino was upset
when the diplomat noted that that Israel had offered humanitarian aid
to Turkey, despite Turkey's recent behavior, and Pino insisted the aid
was really just profits from murdering Arab babies.

But there was more to this, in fact there was ultimate irony in it.
The diplomat speaking at Kent State attacked by Pino was an Israeli
Arab Bedouin and a Muslim. He is Ishmael Khaldi, an adviser to
Israel's Foreign Minister. So any whining from the tenured
Islamofascist Pino about Israel supposedly being an "apartheid regime"
was being debunked before the eyes of the Kent State students in the
very person who was being harassed by Pino.

The president of Kent State University, Lester A. Lefton, denounced
Pino for his behavior, but – as expected – refuses to do anything
about it nor to take disciplinary action against Pino. Lefton himself
is Jewish. But the very fact that Pino was granted tenured and still
holds a position at Kent State shows that academic standards have been
trashed at that university. He continues to use his university
position as a launching pad for the jihad against America and Israel.
It remains to be seen whether the Ohio governor and the Board of
Trustees at Kent State will have the courage to do something about
Pino. And we sure would like to hear why the FBI has never done
anything about the Pino problem.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/31/pino-jihada/

2. Yesterday I posted the incorrect name of the Rector at Tel Aviv
University (I posted the previous one). SO those outraged by
terrorist cheerleader Anat Matar, please take a moment and write to
the new Rector, the correct contact being:

Rector: Prof. Aron Shai
E-mail address: aashai@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University

P.O. Box 39040

Tel Aviv 69978

ISRAEL

(apologies for posted wrong information)

3. While there has been debate since the "deal" in Israel and
abroad about what the consequences of it may bring in the future, as I
am writing this - the future is already here and we have a definitive
partial answer. Southern Israel was this week blitzed with dozens of
state-of-the-art rockets fired by the Hamas into Jewish civilian areas
of the Negev. To make things clear, the targeted areas are inside
Israel's pre-1967 borders and so are hardly "occupied territory."
The rockets have killed, and one Israeli school building suffered a
direct hit.

I think it is abundantly clear that the rocket barrage is a direct
consequence of the "prisoner exchange deal." The Hamas had been
relatively quiet in recent months in the anticipation that some deal
would be struck for Shalit and that it would gain a windfall political
profit from hundreds of its murderers being released from Israeli
prison. Once the deal was completed, however, the Hamas had no reason
for restraint. So any doubts anyone had about how the "deal" would
affect terrorism were blown to smithereens by Hamas rockets in the
Israeli south this week.

Latest Israeli Academic Atrocities

2011-10-30T06:23:00.001-07:00

Israeli Academics in the News – Part I

We have reported regularly on the antics and shenanigans of Tel
Aviv University's Anat Matar, one of the worst tenured extremists at
Tel Aviv University. She is violent and has been arrested for her
violence. She despises Israel and wants it destroyed. She is a
tenured faculty member in philosophy.

Well, Sister Matar is back in the news these days as a cheerleader
and open endorser of terrorist murders of Israelis. She is one of the
Israeli airhead leftists who held a celebration of the freeing of the
1000 plus terrorists in the "prisoner exchange deal" that purchased
the liberation of Gilad Shalit. But she was not celebrating because
Shalit was being freed, but rather because murderers of Jews were
being set free.

One of those released from Israeli prison was convicted terrorist
Muchlas Burjal. He had thrown a grenade at a bus with Jews inside,
except the grenade did not go off. Anat Matar has proclaimed him a
hero and participated in the welcoming celebrations when he returned
home. She organized a group of Israeli leftists to greet the
terrorist at his home, bedecked in PLO flags, joined by Arab fascist
members of the Israeli parliament.

Cited in Makor Rishon October 28, 2011, Matar says that Burjal is
a hero because he threw the grenade at a bus carrying Israeli soldiers
and not civilians, and such an attack is a legitimate form of
resistance. Oh, and not to worry, Matar's own son was not inside the
bus because he served time in prison for refusing to do army service
altogether. Matar is now lobbying for the release of another
convicted terrorist, one Walid Daka, who murdered Israeli soldier
Moshe Tamam. Matar insists that Daka is actually innocent because he
says he is. The court that convicted him disagrees. In an interview
with Makor Rishon, Matar expressed support for terrorist violence by
Palestinian against Israelis as resistance to "occupation."

Curiously, some of the other Israeli ultra-leftist academic
extremists are denouncing Sister Anat. For example, Alon Harel, a
radical professor of law at the Hebrew University, criticized her for
her celebrations of terrorism.

Are you concerned that a tenured member of the faculty at Tel Aviv
University is working as a promoter of murdering Jews and as an
enabler of terrorist atrocities? Why not tell the heads of TAU what
you think?:

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. Dany Leviatan
Email: leviatan@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
Here are a few items that can tell you more about Anat Matar:
http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Anat%20Matar.htm
http://isracampus.org.il/Extra%20Files/IsraCampus.Org.il%20-%20Seth%20Frantzman%20-%20TAU%20Ivory%20Towers%20of%20Critique.pdf
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Anat%20Matar%20-%20Gets%20Arrested.htm

Israeli Academics in the News – Part II

http://hurryupharry.org/2011/10/27/friends-of-raed-salah-ilan-pappe-says-the-blood-libel-isnt-anti-semitic

Friends of Raed Salah: Ilan Pappe says the blood libel isn't anti-Semitic
Lucy Lips, October 27th 2011, 2:39 pm
The Immigration Tribunal ruling upholding the Home Office's ban of
Raed Salah takes as established fact that the cleric said this in East
Jerusalem in 2007:
"We have never allowed ourselves, and listen well, we have never
allowed ourselves to knead the bread for the breaking of the fast
during the blessed month of Ramadan with the blood the children. And
if someone wants a wider explanation, you should ask what used to
happen to some of the children of Europe, whose blood would be mixed
in the dough of the holy bread. God Almighty, is this religion? Is
this what God wants? God will confront you for what you are doing."
There is no other interpretation as a matter of history or elementary
literacy for such a statement than the following: Raed Salah was
presenting the blood libel — i.e. the medieval conspiracy theory that
Jews bake bread with the blood of Gentile children — as legitimate.
"God Almighty, is this religion?" clearly refers to Judaism in this
context, not to Islam or to Christianity, as having incorporated
cannibalism or vampirism into its holy ritual, thereby distinguishing
beween such alleged barbarism and the purity of Islam ("We have never
allowed ourselves…").
Crucially, Raed Salah, the court tells us, seems to understand that
the blood libel is anti-Semitic and yet he somehow denies that this is
what he has advanced. His defence has argued, to quote from the court
ruling summary of the defence's case, that
The reference to the holy bread was a metaphor used to convey an
example of those who had falsely used religion to justify their
crimes. It refers to the actions of Israelis who use religion to
subject the Palestinians to oppression. The Appellant drew a parallel
with the crimes of the Spanish Inquisition. The Appellant's evidence
is supported by that of Professor Ilan Pappe who although describing
the Appellant's address as at times incoherent and emotive, said the
Appellant did not invoke the blood libel in this or any other speech,
and made a clear distinction between Jews as a race and the actions of
Israeli officials. The words used by the Appellant on this occasion
did not amount to blood libel because he did not refer to Jewish
bread; the message of the address was not anti-Semitic or even
anti-Zionist, but directed to the violation of Muslim rights in
Jerusalem.
***

For more stories of academic atrocities involving Israeli (pseudo-?)
academics, go to www.isracampus.org.il

Ben Gurion University in the News

2011-10-28T05:06:00.001-07:00

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/149183

'Ben Gurion a Greenhouse for Radical Left'

Zionist groups welcome decision to investigate professor for
incitement, call on universities to act.
Maayana Miskin
Zionist groups expressed satisfaction Friday over the decision to
investigate Professor Eyal Nir for incitement. Nir called on the
public to attack Zionist youth dancing in the streets on Jerusalem day
and "break their elbows."

The Land of Israel Legal Forum said the decision was a good one, but
questioned why prosecutors had waited several months to look into
Nir's statements. If a right-wing professor had called to attack
leftist demonstrators, it would have taken the Justice Ministry just
days to decide to open an investigation, Forum activists said.

"The wheels of justice turn slowly and with astonishing selectivity,"
said forum head Nachi Eyal.

The Im Tirzu student group warned that Nir is not alone. "Ben Gurion
University has been a greenhouse for the extreme left for some time,"
activists said, mentioning notoriously anti-Zionist professors Niv
Gordon and Oren Yiftahel among others.

The university has the responsibility to act immediately against
professors who use their publicly-funded positions to spread
extreme-left incitement, the group said. "A lecturer must not continue
to work in the university while inciting to murder."

MK Ofir Akunis (Likud) said the decision was a sign of a welcome
turn-around. "For years, the issue of leftist incitement against the
right has been ignored," he said. "It must be handled with the full
force of the law."

Guide for the Perplexed

2011-10-26T02:59:00.001-07:00

Guide for the Perplexed

Posted By Dr. Yasser Dasmabebi On October 26, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Daily
Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments

I have come to realize just how difficult it may be to decipher news
about the Middle East, Islam, Israel, the Arab World, and all these
powerful and explosive issues of our times for those who rely on such
media stalwarts as The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los
Angeles Times, the major television networks, cable news, etc. for
their information. For example, how is a person to ascertain whether
the slayer of a family is a terrorist or a militant or a gunman or an
assailant or an activist or a freedom-fighter?

So, purely as a public service, I have organized the following
glossary of the most pertinent terms and expressions, as typically
used in the above-mentioned news sources. I hope, insha'allah, the
reader will find it helpful to unravel the Gordian Knot of language
that is today's (and yesterday's and tomorrow's) Middle East!

Dr. Yasser Dasmabebi holds the Edward Said-Noam Chomsky Linguistics
Chair at Abdul Abulbul Amir University in Cairo.

************************************

Aggression: Killing people who are trying to kill you.

Al Qaeda: the terrorist group that, according to American security
sources, embodies the world-wide Islamist movement, and that is either
"significantly degraded" or is still "extremely dangerous," depending
on which government official is doing the talking.

Apartheid: The political/social system of the one and only country in
the Middle East that integrates Jews, Beduins, Arabs, whites, blacks,
Muslems, Ethiopians, Russians, Christians, Greek Orthodox, Russian
Orthodox, Bahai, et al.

"Apes & Pigs": See "Jew" below.

Arab Emir: Military dictator.

Arab King: Military dictator.

Arab President: Military dictator.

Arab Prime Minister: Military dictator.

Arab Spring: Replacement of one dictatorship with another, with the
help of Western money and media cheerleading.

Arab Street: Enraged mobs chanting and screaming their hatred,
determined to annihilate Israel and the Jews. They can often be seen
burning American and Israeli flags, passing out candies and firing
guns into the air in response to successful murders of Westerners
(closely related to):

Arab Humiliation: The pervasive feeling on the Arab street generated
by their failure to annihilate Israel and the Jews in several wars.
Many opinion-makers, Middle East experts and op-ed writers argue that
Arab humiliation is at the root of the Middle East conflict; i.e., "If
only the Jews would let themselves be destroyed, the Arab street would
feel better about themselves, and then there would be peace."

Ayatola: Persian dictator. Spiritual leader of that faith that desires
to ignite nuclear holocaust in order to bring about the arrival of the
Mahdi. (See "Mahdi" below.)

Bias: An expression of support for the existence of Israel.

Caliphate: The unification of lands ruled in the name of Islam, ruled
by a Caliph. (See "Arab King," "Arab President," etc. above.)

Compromise: To give something palpable, such as land, in return for a
promise not to keep on trying to annihilate you.

Developing Country: A country that is not developing.

Disproportionate Response: Winning.

Diversity: The condition in which all cultures are viewed as equally
and inherently virtuous, except for the culture of the West, which is
viewed as evil by virtue of imperialism, colonialism and endemic
racism (see "Racist" below).

Emergency Laws: The law.

Father of the Palestinian People: An Egyptian man, raised by his
uncle, Hitler's buddy, and one of the world's most successful
kleptocrats. (See "PLO" below.)

Fatwa: A pronouncement of a mullah that sanctions murder, but only of
disagreeable people, like inadequately covered women, Salman Rushdie,
etc.

Female Genital Mutilation: That ritual of which Western feminist
organizations seem, by virtue of their silence, to approve.

Hamas: The democratically elected government of Gaza whose founding
charter calls for genocide.

Hezbollah: The democratic group whose purpose is saving Lebanon from
Israeli aggression, and whose founding charter calls for genocide.

History: Having nothing whatsoever to do with what has actually
happened, but rather being what has come to be called "narrative,"
i.e., "storytelling." For one example, allusions to the "Ancient
Nation of Palestine;" and for another, almost all the Muslem
accomplishments President Obama enumerated in his momentous Cairo
speech (also see "Rewriting History" below).

Holocaust: That genocide that did not happen, but that the Jews
orchestrated in order to steal Arab land, and that of which the Jewish
presence in Palestine is worse than.

Honor Killings: The cultural imperative to murder one's
daughter/sister/niece for humiliating male members…(see "Shariah"
below).

Human Rights: The credo by which murder committed by a person from a
country which used to be called "Third World" (now considered racist
terminology) is good (see "Resistance" below); retaliatory killing by
a person who is either from a developed country, a white person or
most especially a Jew, is bad (see "Agression" above).

Human Shields: Integral part of Hamas & Hezbollah military strategy.

Islamic Republic: Military dictatorship.

Israel: Occupied territory (see "Zionist Entity" below).

Israeli Prime Minister: Hawkish, right-winger, hard-liner.

Jerusalem: City holy to Islam in which the Jews have no history.

Jew: The source of all decadence and evil in the world; descendent of
apes and pigs.

Jihad: The inner spiritual struggle for self-purification or the
bloody military struggle for world domination depending on to which
journalist and in what language one is speaking.

Judeo-Christian Values: The credo of that civilization which has lost
all its values, except for that racism is bad, and diversity is good.

Koran: The book that was revealed word-for-word to the Prophet
Muhammed (Peace Be Upon Him) by the Angel Gabriel…or not.

Leftist: Supporter of PLO (see "PLO" below) and Hamas (see "Hamas"
above) and Muslem Brotherhood (see "Muslem Brotherhood" below).

Mahdi: The Shia Messiah who has been hiding for centuries at the
bottom of a well.

Martyr: Someone who kills someone else while killing himself, said to
be rewarded for his martyrdom by the acquisition of 72 virgins upon
his arrival in Paradise, at least according to what the Prophet
Muhammed (Peace Be Upon Him) said the Angel Gabriel told him (see
"Koran" above).

Militant, Assailant, Gunman, Activist: terrorist.

Moderate Palestinian Leader: Former KGB operative, Holocaust denier,
and financier of Munich Olympic massacre.

Mosque: A place for the storage of armaments.

Muslem Brotherhood: A mostly secular and non-violent political party in Egypt.

Occupation: Jewish presence in disputed territory. (See "Israel" above.)

Peace: War of attrition.

Peace Process: The dismantling of Israel.

Peace Talks: The avoidance of peace.

PLO: Organization created in 1964 to end the 1967 occupation.

Palestinian Authority: The world's most successful kleptocracy.

Palestinian Hero: Murderer of children.

Palestinian Prime Minister: Moderate, bold (see "Arab Prime Minister" above).

Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The authentic Jewish playbook for
world domination.

Racist: A person who disagrees with or does not like or does not
support the reelection of President Obama.

Radical Islamic Movement: A group whose stated official goal is
genocide (see "Hamas" and "Hezbollah" above).

Recognition: A truce until the next time.

Refugee: Someone who has refused to take refuge, or who has not been
allowed to take refuge.

"Religion of Peace": That civilization with which the Judeo-Christian
civilization is locked in a war to the death.

Resistance: Randomly killing civilians, especially children.

Rewriting History: See "History" above.

Right: Demand to live in Israel by people who hate it and wish to destroy it.

of Return: By people very, very few of whom have ever actually been there.

Settlement: An illegal community made up of settlers. (See "Settler" below.)

Settler: Someone who builds his house in order to thwart any chance at
making peace between Jews and Palestinians.

Shariah: The Islamic system of jurisprudence which codifies and
dignifies rape, child marriage, specific classes of murder such as
honor killings (see "Honor Killings" above), etc.

Shia: People who are certain that Sunnis are not real Muslems, and are
in fact infidels, and should therefore be slaughtered.

Sunni: People who are certain that Shia are not real Muslems, and are
in fact infidels, and should therefore be slaughtered.

War Crime: Retaliation and defense. Any action whose intent is victory.

War on Terror: Pretense that the enemy of the West is made up of
small, shadowy groups motivated by childhood poverty (see "Al Qaeda"
above). ("We're depraved on account of we're deprived" — apologies to
S. Sondheim.)

Zionism: The ideology of the Jews who aspire to control, dominate and
take over the world.

Zionist: Someone who is worse than a Nazi.

Zionist Entity: That place that does not exist, as on Arab maps, but
that must be destroyed.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle. Click here.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/26/guide-for-the-perplexed/

Pop! went the weasel.

2011-10-20T12:58:00.001-07:00

Special blessing for Shmini Atzeret, even if a few hours late:.

All around the Libyan Bush,
The rebels chased the weasel.
The monkeys thought the weasel would win, but
Pop! went the weasel.

I thought now would be an apt time to re-post this, from last Purim:

http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/47519/
RETURN LIBYA TO ITS RIGHTFUL RULERS!

By: Steven Plaut

Date: Wednesday, March 09 2011
The world is wringing its hands over the fate of Libya. Being a
helpful sort of guy, and what with Purim fast approaching, I know just
the proper solution.

Control of Libya should be returned at once to the natural and
rightful owners of Libya, the people who controlled it before it was
invaded and occupied by Arab military hordes.

Libya should be returned to the Jews.

Why the Jews? Well, because according to at least a few scholars, Jews
controlled Libya not only before the Khaddafi era but long before the
country was seized and occupied by the Arabs. And, according to at
least a few theories, Libya was governed by a Jewish Berber queen
known to history as Kahina.

In the spirit of Adar and Purim, let's accept those theories as
indisputable fact and proceed:

Before the birth of Muhammad, back when there were no Arabs at all in
North Africa, Libya and its surroundings were home to Byzantine
occupiers and indigenous tribes. The latter were the true natives of
the area.

The Romans called the tribes Berbers, from which they derived the
derogatory adjective "barbarian," but the Berbers called themselves
Imazighen, possibly meaning "free people" or "free and noble men."

Libya was Berber long before the Egyptians and their slaves built any
pyraminds. Cathaginians conquered the area and were evicted by other
conquerers, as were the Vandal tribes and the Byzantines.

But the natives consisted of Berbers. And Jews. The Jews
probably entered the area during the period of the Second Temple, and
Berber-Jewish ties were strengthened during the revolt against the
Romans in the Land of Israel that ended with the destruction of the
Temple.

North African Jews mixed with and influenced local Berber tribes. The
French historian Marcel Simon claims that Tripoli, the same Tripoli in
which Muammar Khaddafi suppressed his own people, was under the rule
of Jewish Berbers as early as the first century of the common era.

By the time the Arab imperialist armies entered Libya after the death
of Muhammad, Berbers in Libya and North Africa belonged to Christian
tribes (usually heretical heterodox Christians), pagan tribes, and at
least one large Jewish tribe. And the Jewish tribe was led by a woman.
No glass ceilings for her. She didn't need any Reform rabbis lecturing
her about egalitarianism in Judaism.

While known in most histories as the Kahina (from the root word kohen
for priestess), her actual name is given variously as Dahiyah, Dahia,
or Dhabba. Her tribe, known as the Jerawa, was based in the Aures
Mountains in eastern Algeria and Tunisia, and its control extended
into Libya. And she was a warrior queen.

The historian Charles-Andre Julien, in his History of North Africa,
calls her the Berber Deborah. Her most dramatic victories were over
the Arab imperialist invaders. She decided to resist the illegal
occupation of her homeland by Arab colonialists and kick them out with
force. She drove the first wave of Arab invaders out of Libya
altogether, though they later returned.

After the Arab general Hassan ibn al Numan took Carthage from the
Byzantines, the Kahina's forces defeated him on the battlefield. Alas,
he later turned the tables and defeated her. Most Berber tribes were
eventually Islamized, though they retained their penchant for
embracing theological heterodoxy even as Muslims.

The medieval Arab historian Ibn Khaldun writes at length about her
military campaigns. The great historian Edward Gibbon, author of the
classic history of Rome, mentions her. She was a figure of fascination
for the American writer Washington Irving, better known for his tales
of Rip van Winkle and Ichabod Crane.

As we see, when Muammar Khaddafi's ancestors were chasing camels
around what is now Saudi Arabia, Jewish roots were well entrenched in
Libya. So would not the most logical resolution of the current
political crisis in Libya be to restore it to its proper Jewish
rulers?

If the Arabs are thought to be entitled to 22 different states, why
should the Jews not have at least two - one in the Land of Israel and
one in Libya? Jewish high-tech know-how in agriculture would turn
Libya into a rain forest within a decade.

In fact, since Purim is coming and I'm in a good mood, I'll even
suggest that the Palestinians be moved to the southern part of Libya
near the Chad border and be allowed to set up their own state there.
Maybe even two states, one for Hamas and one for the PLO. They can
have a cut of Libyan oil revenue if they behave themselves there.

If a brief period of Arab rule over the Land of Israel is thought to
convey some sort of legitimate claim to parts of Israel for Arabs, why
should Jewish rule in Libya, older than the Arab conquest of
Palestine, not similarly confer natural rights of sovereignty?

The peace plan is simple. The illegal Arab colonial occupation of
Libya must end. All illegal settlements must be removed. The
legitimate Jewish rulers of Libya must be restored to power!

The Netanyahu Capitulation

2011-10-17T05:02:00.001-07:00

The Netanyahu Capitulation
By Steven Plaut

"Those released will return to armed struggle. It is a great national
achievement." Khaled Mashal, Chairman, Hamas Political Bureau,
Damascus, Syria

I think that the best definition of leadership is where a political
leader is willing to resist populist pressure to do "popular" things
whenever those "popular" things are harmful. A real leader is someone
capable of resisting the temptation to act as demagogue and play to
the crowd.

In the massive release of mass murderers about to take place (I am
writing this just before it goes ahead) to "buy" back from the Hamas
terrorists Israel's kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, Bibi Netanyahu has
revealed himself to be the very opposite of a leader. He is a cheap
demagogue playing to the crowd for transient popularity. And the
people of Israel will pay the price for his theatrics.

The release of the Palestinian mass murderers is popular in Israel at
the moment, according to public opinion surveys. Netanyahu has a long
track record of doing whatever the caprices of the public happen to
favor at the moment. So I suppose in some ways it was not surprising
that he agreed to this atrocity. A man who does not have the backbone
to stare down and dismiss summer Woodstock-on-the-Yarkon "social
justice" protesters cannot be expected to resist the passionate
Israeli public desire to see Gilad Shalit released.

The release of the murderers is fleetingly popular this week.
Negotiating with Palestinians is also generally popular in Israel. So
are price controls on housing and raising the minimum wage. So is
(depending on wording of question) creating a Palestinian state.
Being a leader means refusing to create disasters just because the
public this week happens to feel that it is a nice idea to create
them.

There is a general and deeply-felt desire for Shalit's release among
all Israelis. The media have kept the plight of his family in the
headlines for five years. Shalit has been in captivity for longer
than the US soldiers who survived the Bataan death march in the
Philippines or British troops captured in Hong Kong and Singapore.

But it is now clear that the main effect of the organizations in
Israel drumming up support for "Let's get Shalit Released," and "We
demand Shalit's Freedom," was to increase the number of murderers
released in the exchange, from a couple of hundred to over a thousand.
It was obvious all along that the protests "on behalf of Gilad" had
no effect whatsoever on the Hamas other than persuading it to hold out
longer for greater and greater levels of appeasement. The protests
simply weakened the resolve of the already weak Israeli political
leadership to resist the extortion.

The first of the atrocious massive releases of terrorists by Israel
took place in 1985, when the National Unity Government of the Labor
Party and Likud released terrorists in the "Ahmed Jibril Deal," to the
PFLP terrorist leader Jibril. Shimon Peres was the Prime Minister at
the time (what a surprise!). 1150 prisoners were released in exchange
for three Israeli POWs, who had been captured during the first
Lebanese War. Many of the terrorists released resumed their careers
in terrorism and led the "First Intifada."

That moronic "deal" served as precedent. Thereafter Israel paid in
the currency of murderers in every "deal" in which captive Israelis
were taken, and even in exchange for the release of the corpses of
Israeli soldiers murdered by the terrorists. The massive release of
murderers naturally always served as incentive for the terrorists to
kidnap more Israelis. There is some serious doubt as to whether
Shalit would have been kidnapped in the first place had it not been
for those precedents.

In those repeated wholesale releases of terrorists, Israel always
attempted to maintain a figleaf of self-respect, setting some limits
on who could be released. There was Israeli reluctance to releasing
murderers of children, or those who had actually pulled the triggers
in killing civilians, or those involved in suicide bombings.

No longer.

The Netanyahu capitulation has at long last put an end to all
pretense. The very worst mass murderers of children and civilians are
about to be released. The litany of their crimes is too long and
horrendous to be reproduced here. You can see more details here:
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Details+Israeli+prisoner+swap+spark+outrage/5556176/story.html
But they involve those who murdered multiple members of the same
families, those who placed bombs in the Jerusalem Sbarro pizza
restaurant murdering children, those who lured a 15 year old boy into
the West Bank with internet flirting and murdered him, and too many
other murders. Some of the atrocities sound more like events that
took place in Nazi-conquered Europe than in the independent Jewish
state. A surviving member of the family destroyed in the Sbarro
attack is in the news this week for having vandalized the grave this
week of Yitzhak Rabin, whom he blames for the murders of his family
and the release of the murderers. (See
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148820)

As in all cases of mind-numbing stupidity being perpetrated by
Israel's government, Netanyahu came in right on cue and defended the
capitulation on grounds of "What choice was there?" Whenever Israeli
politicians choose the stupidest choice possible, they always insist
there is no other choice.

What choice was there? The choice was not to agree to the
capitulation. Just say no.

Of the terrorists released, many will revert to their careers of
murder, as did so many released terrorists before them. They will be
celebrated by the barbarians as heroes and role models. It should not
take long before the cost of saving the life of one Jew will turn out
to be the deaths of many Jews. The deal is popular because the
Israeli public is familiar with the faces of Gilad Shalit and his
family. The people who will now be murdered or kidnapped by the
terrorists newly inspired by the capitulation do not have faces. Nor
do THEIR families. Yet.

It was clear all along that there were other ways in which Israel and
its government could have dealt with the Shalit kidnapping and
captivity. Israel could have assassinated 30 terrorists a day and
announce that the targeting would continue every day until Shalit was
released. Or Israel could have kidnapped the family members of Hamas
leaders and held THEM in captivity until Shalit was free. Or Israel
could have executed 30 imprisoned terrorists inside Israeli prison
each day.

Better yet, Israel could have eliminated the terrorist "bait" that
drives kidnapping in the first place -- by executing terrorists. No
one has ever been murdered by a terrorist who has already been
executed. Every time anyone brings up the idea of capital punishment
for terrorism, Israel's politicians wring their hands and whine about
how "unethical" it is, how it violates Jewish ethics. All this coming
from politicians who do not have the slightest idea of what Jewish
ethics has to say about anything. Suffice it to say that capital
punishment is as fundamentally grounded in Torah and Jewish ethics as
are bans on incest and adultery. Jewish ethics explicitly prohibits
abandoning other randomly chosen Jews to be killed in order to obtain
the release of one Jew being threatened.

Netanyahu and his team may soon be learning how ephemeral "popularity"
is and how capricious the throng can be. It may not take long for
the Netanyahu cowardice to reap what it has sown, in the form of
busses exploding on Israeli streets or suicide bombing attacks on
Israeli restaurants. And those victims of Netanyahu's capitulation
will have faces and families.

The answer to "Occupy Wall Street"

2011-10-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/11/occupy-berkeley/

Occupy Berkeley!

Posted By Steven Plaut On October 11, 2011

The focus of the country has lately been on the "Occupy Wall Street"
movement, or "OWS." You know, the people who claim to speak for the
99% of Americans who are not wealthy capitalists and who think they
can create social justice and equality by marching around the New York
Stock Exchange and other centers of capitalism, like Greenwich
Village.

Here is how the leaders of the leaderless OWS describe themselves on
their Web site: "Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement
with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one
thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer
tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the
revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the
use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants." They
go on to promise: "We are growing. Block by block – city by city. We
will see change in this country, in this world. It will happen sooner
than you can imagine."

Now it occurs to me that there is only one appropriate and sensible
response to the "Occupy Wall Street" anarchists and street urchins.
And that is to create a competing grassroots mass movement that will
challenge the attention OWS is receiving in the media, while offering
a rational and constructive alternative agenda for real social change.

I propose that the alternative mass movement be called "Occupy Berkeley."

OB will be a mass movement holding protests and street demonstrations
in Berkeley, California. Its first order of business will be to
occupy Telegraph Avenue. The slogan of OB should be, "We are the
other 99.999999%," referring to the fact that people who despise
Berkeley street hippies and "anarchists" represent exactly that
proportion of the general population.

OB will specialize in civil disobedience and street theater. Among
its initiatives will be a mass roundup of Berkeley hippies who will be
conducted to the central facilities of OB, where they will all be
given free baths. A special re-education campus will be set up in
Orange County, California, where all Bay Area communists and drug
users will be sent to learn about the disadvantages of communism.

OB will also rid Berkeley of those asking passersby for spare change.
Instead, OB will promote entrepreneurship for panhandlers and for
homeless youths. Anyone in the Bay area stopping passersby and asking
for spare change will be ordered to do pushups, where the first 40 are
unpaid but after that, payment will be made to the panhandlers at the
rate of 20 cents per pushup. Tax free. Pregnant panhandlers and
those over 70 will be permitted to do their pushups from the knees.

Telegraph Avenue will be renamed "Wall Street West" and Shattuck
Avenue will be renamed "Milton Friedman Boulevard." The area within 4
miles of the University of California (CAL) campus will be declared a
tie-dye-free zone, where no tie dyed clothing may be worn. Discounts
to the BART and other forms of public transit will be offered to
Berkeley residents wearing ties and jackets. All the "head shops"
selling drug paraphernalia along Telegraph Avenue will be converted
into barber shops and Bible stores. When not using public transit,
travel in SUVs will be not only permitted but made mandatory.

Special retreats will be held for Berkeley residents still believing
in communism. There they will be housed in Gulag barracks, woken up
at 5 AM, and ordered to do physical labor without getting paid.
Berkeley socialists can also be sent to the retreats, but they will
only be woken up to work at 5:30 AM. Non-competitive sports will be
prohibited during leisure time, only competitive sports allowed.
Afternoon breaks at the camp will be devoted to generating greenhouse
gases. On Saturday nights, "Dirty Harry" movies will be screened.
Attendance will be mandatory. Vegan foods will be absolutely
prohibited there.

Berkeley is of course only the beginning. After Berkeley is occupied
by masses of marching conservatives, it will be the turn of Madison,
WI; Amherst, MA; and of course San Francisco. Any city or state
approving of medical marijuana will next be targeted. Cities
undergoing occupation by OB will see reverse affirmative action
implemented, whereby anyone who was harmed in the past by affirmative
action programs will be entitled to preferences, compensation, and
reparations.

Occupy Berkeley is growing, town by town, block by block, taser by
taser. We are drawing bipartisan support from people sick and tired
of the selfish indulgence of leftwing radicals and hippies. Unlike
OWS, the only genders we represent are men and women. And we are
accepting donations because we believe in materialism and selfishness.

We chant: "The world is watching!"; "This is how democracy looks!";
"We are the ones we've been waiting for!"; and "It is never too late
for a spanking."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Baaa Baaa Tenured Sheep

2011-10-10T02:37:00.001-07:00

1. It would be hard to find a better illustration of the
politicization and the anti-democratic character of Israel's dual
judicial system.

The story begins with a woman named Yifat Alkobi, a married woman
from Kiryat Arba. She was arrested in 2007 for spitting and throwing
stones at a Palestinian she claims was harassing her, the accusations
against Alkobi being based on "testimony" from the radical anti-Israel
NGO Yesh Din. She has been in the news before, accused of spitting on
and cursing a Palestinian neighbor
(http://exmypar.wordpress.com/2007/01/22/yifat-alkobi/ ). She first
got sentenced to a fine and probation and was later acquitted of the
charges (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4042311,00.html).

But while being transported to prison she asked a Jewish
policeman conducting her there not to leave her alone with Arab
policemen. The Arab policemen were probably actually Druse or Bedouin
border patrolmen.

When word of her comment reached the Deputy Attorney General Shai
Nitzan, he ordered that she be charged with "insulting a public
servant," the favorite bludgeon of Nitzan to suppress the freedom of
speech of non-leftists. Shai Nitzan, you recall, is essentially a
Soviet-style official in charge of using the judicial system to
persecute the Israeli Right and suppress freedom of speech. He is
behind the campaign to arrest and indict anyone who recommends that
people read a controversial book that Nitzan considers to be racist.
He persecutes and harasses rabbis. He ordered a faculty member at the
University of Haifa to report to the police, KGB style, about comments
he made in his classroom, comments Nitzan considered bigoted but the
University administration did not.

This is the same Shai Nitzan who has never gotten around to
indicting any of the Israel far leftists who call for murdering
non-leftists and settlers, who endorse terrorism, and who call for
mass lawbreaking and refusal to serve in the military. This is the
same Nitzan who never indicts Arab public figures in Israel for
endorsing terrorism and murder. But when a Jewish woman asks not to
be left alone with Arab policemen, this was a transgression about
which Nitzan leapt into action. Had an Arab woman asked not to be
left alone in the company of Jewish men, Nitzan would never have done
anything at all. Alkobi never said she would object to being left
alone with Arab policeWOMEN.

But the affair did not end there. It turns out that a young
conscientious judge in the Jerusalem magistrate's court named Dov
Pollack spoke out against Nitzan's behavior. When the Alkobi case
came before him, Pollack ordered the police to explain in court how it
arrived at this charge against her. The police opposed the demand to
explain and demanded that Pollack recuse himself from sitting in the
case, claiming he was "biased" and had "expressed political opinions."
In addition, the police claimed that Pollack commented that Nitzan's
behavior was due to the fact that he enjoyed the backing of the
current Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, Dorit Beinisch.
Allegedly Pollack said that since Beinisch is due to retire in
February he would schedule the trial for March in order for
objectivity to be maintained. He also is alleged to have said that
this was hardly the first case of one-sided biased prosecution by Shai
Nitzan.

In response, the Attorney General Moshe Lador, the leftist boss of
Shai Nitzan, decided to file an official complaint against Judge
Pollack with the "Commissioner for Complaints against Judges." The
commissioner actually cannot fire a judge and the complaint is mainly
a nuisance tactic. Pollack fired back his own letter of response,
accusing Lador of improperly attempting to influence court procedures
and decisions. (Alkobi was acquitted of the charges by a different
judge, not Pollack.)

So here we have the spectacle of a biased leftist State
Prosecutor refusing to fire his own biased politicized deputy for his
years of anti-democratic actions and his assaults against freedom of
speech. And this same State Prosecutor is now attempting to suppress
the freedom of speech of a judge and harass that judge for daring to
question the political motives of Shai Nitzan in an obviously absurd
indictment of a woman for doing nothing more than ask not to be left
alone with Arab policemen.

Shai Nitzan should have been indicted for bigotry, not Mrs. Alkobi.

2. People outside of the academic world have a great deal of
difficulty believing how much of academia consists of sheep-like herd
behavior. Having spent much of my professional career at the
University of Haifa, I see the herd behavior all the time.

The latest outbreak of mass sheep-like herd behavior developed at
the University of Haifa in response to the recent vandalization of a
mosque in the town of Tuba Zangria in Israel's north.

First let me say that I am disgusted with any vandalization of
any mosque or any other site regarded by any religion as sacred. I
was revolted by the Florida preacher burning Korans. Civilized people
do not dishonor the objects and buildings regarded by other religions
as sacred.

Israel has seen several acts of vandalization of Moslem sites, in
most cases consisting of writing graffiti. A handful of youths,
mainly teenagers, calling themselves "Price Tag," are widely suspected
of being behind these, although I suspect the Kahanists. The "Price
Tag" people are hooligans who also curse and attack Israeli police and
soldiers and call them Nazis. I am all in favor of prosecuting them
and would have no objection to their undergoing intense spanking. The
vandalization of the Tuba Zangria mosque was probably the work of one
or a few of these. Two youths have been arrested. There have been
some other cases of vandalization this week, including graffiti at
Moslem and Christian cemeteries in Jaffa (not counting the torching of
a Jaffa synagogue by Arabs). I would not be surprised if these were
the work of the same two or three kids. To put this into perspective,
the incidence of mosque vandalization in Israel is small compared with
the US and parts of Europe, and probably only involves a handful of
kids.

(The police claim that some of the Jaffa mischief is related to
football/soccer hooliganism. In soccer games in Israel, Jews and
Arabs sometimes yell "Death to Jews" and "Death to Arabs" at each
other from the stands. One of the more popular soccer teams is the
all-Arab "Sons of Sakhnin," and the catcalls are common when it plays.
Soccer hooliganism is hardly an Israeli invention, of course, which
is one reason I have always favored all newspaper reporting about
soccer matches where hooliganism appears being printed in Talmudic
Aramaic.)

Let us note that there has not been a single Jewish public
figure in Israel from any part of the political spectrum who has
condoned the vandalizations. To the contrary, from Netanyahu on down
the vandalizations were universally condemned in Israel.

The matter became a University of Haifa obsession after the
campus "Jewish-Arab Center," headed by a Jewish professor, issued a
formal statement condemning the vandalization of the mosque. As your
humble curmudgeon pointed out on a campus chat list for professors,
condemning the mosque vandalization was all well and good, but the
statement by the "Jewish-Arab Center" was issued the day AFTER
Joseph's Tomb in Nablus was vandalized there by Palestinian
terrorists, who painted swastikas all over the structure. The
statement by the "Center" condemning what happened in Tuba Zangria
never so much as mentioned the incident at Joseph's Tomb. The Tomb
has been regularly vandalized by Palestinians every few weeks for many
years. Your humble curmudgeon asked if the Jewish-Arab Center was
only outraged by vandalization of Moslem shrines.

Several professors wrote me nasty responses, telling me I should be
ashamed of myself. Several other professors openly justified the
vandalizations of Joseph's Tomb as legitimate acts of resistance. You
can see one example posted at the top of http://isracampus.org.il/.
Professors justifying the swastika painting at Joseph's Tomb claimed
that it was not even a historical Jewish structure, that it was myth
that Joseph was buried there, that it was actually a Moslem shrine.
(The fact that the Moslem structures atop the Temple Mount are based
on historic myth has never been proposed as a reason to remove them.)
Never mind that local Arabs in Nablus all call it Joseph's Tomb in
Arabic. One professor insisted that it was nothing at all like the
mosque vandalization because the mosque vandals were motivated by
hatred, while the swastika painters on Joseph's Tomb were motivated by
a desire for peace and freedom and an end to occupation. Other
professors objected that since Nablus was "outside Israel," the
swastikas at Joseph's Tomb "do not count." I pointed out that there
have been countless acts of vandalization of synagogues and Jewish
cemeteries within Israel's Green Line 1967 borders, and of course
those praying at the Western Wall have often been attacked by Moslems
on the Temple Mount throwing things down at them, so there were plenty
of incidents against Jews that the Jewish Arab Center could condemn.

One professor told me I should be ashamed of making such
statements just before Yom Kippur and its calls for atonement and the
need for all Jews to atone for the vandalization. I responded that
the discussion on the professors chat list about the mosque incident
did indeed remind me of Yom Kippur, because of the part in the Yom
Kippur prayers in which humans are described as sheep in a herd.

This is not the first time the Jewish-Arab Center showed its
biases. This past summer the head of the center issued a special
greeting sent to everyone on campus wishing Moslems a happy Ramadan
and an "easy fast" (obviously not a traditional Moslem greeting but a
Jewish one). The statement was issued a few days before Tisha B'Av.
At the time I asked why no wishes for an easy fast were sent out by
the Center to Jews that week. Later, no doubt due to my jabbing my
finger in their eye, the Center would send Happy Near Year greetings
to Jews on Rosh Hashana, but again no "easy fast" for Yom Kippur.
Perhaps the "Jewish Arab Center" should be renamed the Arab Center.

In response to the statement by the Jewish Arab Center, large
numbers of University of Haifa faculty members issued calls to go the
Tuba Zangria to pay solidarity visits and to show the locals how
horrified they are of the vandalization of the mosque. Some
professors proposed using University funds to repair the mosque.
Dozens of professors issued herd-like endorsements on the professors
chat list of the calls to make pilgrimage to Tuba Zangria.

Lest this appear to be merely the herd response of bleeding
hearts and do-gooders, it should also be pointed out that many of
those joining the herd were the very same people who campaigned
against the singing of Hatikva at University of Haifa graduation
ceremonies. The initiator of the solidarity caravan had suggested
that the PLO "anthem" be sung at those ceremonies. Not a single one
of those joining the herd condemned the swastikas at Joseph's Tomb.
None of the professors proposed visiting the Jaffa synagogue that was
torched this week by Arabs.

Not a single one had ever issued a condemnation of Arab
vandalization or Arab terrorist attacks against Jews. Not a single
one of those joining the herd had denounced the massacre of children
at the Merkaz Harav yeshiva in West Jerusalem in 2008, and in fact a
few of the professors had justified that attack at the time. Those
who were so adamant about how religious sensitivities must be
respected spent Yom Kippur sending out email messages organizing a
caravan of cars to Tuba Zangria the next day, to show their
solidarity. It goes without saying that when their beloved
Palestinians have attacked synagogues, including when those synagogues
happened to have praying Jews inside (Paris and Istanbul come to
mind), not a single member of the academic herd condemned this on the
professors chat lists. So large numbers of University of Haifa
academics are horrified by cases of juvenile Jewish vandals damaging
Moslem (and occasionally Christian) sites, but consider vandalization
of Jewish holy sites and murdering Jews to be legitimate protest and
resistance.

I think the entire matter can be summed up nicely with this nursery rhyme:

Baaa Baaa Tenured Sheep, have you any wool,
Yassir, Yassir, two bags full,
One for the mosque, sir, and one for the church,
But none for that little shul they burned down the lane.

A French state? What a silly idea!

2011-10-07T01:19:00.001-07:00

This week the President of France, Nicky Sakozy, announced that the
very notion of a "Jewish State" is a silly idea. See the report here:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148556

Well, it occurs to me that if you REALLY want to find a truly silly
idea, it is the idea of a French state.

I reprint here an older posting of mine:

http://www.meforum.org/62/land-for-peace-the-french-solution

Land for Peace: The French Solution
by Steven Plaut
Middle East Quarterly
June 2000, p. 96

http://www.meforum.org/62/land-for-peace-the-french-solution

On a recent trip to Israel, French prime minister Lionel Jospin urged
Israel to make concessions for peace. More interesting yet, in
documents relating to his visit, Jerusalem was called the "capital of
the Palestinian Authority." And what does he consider the capital of
Israel? Tel Aviv, of course.1 This trip followed by a few years one
made by President Jacques Chirac, who used the occasion of his visit
in 1996 to announce that "Syria has a moral right to demand return of
the Golan Heights."2

These French politicians may be on to something important. Never one
to back down from a challenge, I have prepared a set of proposals for
consideration by the French people, so they too can achieve a full,
lasting, and just peace with their historic opponents.

First, we all agree that territory must not be annexed by force.
Therefore, we can also agree that Germany has a moral right to demand
the return of Alsace-Lorraine, for the French aggression in 1945 and
its consequent occupation must not be rewarded. "A full withdrawal for
full peace" should operate here. Further, France must agree to the
return and rehabilitation of all ethnic Germans expelled from
Alsace-Lorraine after World Wars I and II, as well as all those they
define as their descendents.

But this, of course, is just the first step toward a solution, as no
aggression can be rewarded—and France has much other stolen territory
to return. It took Corsica from Genoa, Nice and Savoy from Piedmont;
as the successor state, Italy must get back all these lands. By
similar token, territories grabbed from the Habsburgs go back to
Austria, including Franche-Comté, Artois, and historic Burgundy. The
Roussillon area (along the Pyrenées) must be returned to Spain, its
rightful owner. And Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine, and Gascony must be
returned to their rightful owners, the British royal family.

Not even this not enough for the sake of peace. Brittany and Languedoc
must be granted autonomy at once, recognizing the Breton and Occitan
Liberation organizations as their legal rulers. This leaves the French
government in control over the Île de France (the area around Paris).

That, however, still does not solve the problem of the Holy City of
Paris, sacred to artists, gourmets, and adulterers. The Corsicans
obviously have a historic claim to the Tomb of the Emperor Napoleon,
their famed son, as well as the Invalides complex and beyond. For the
sake of peace, is it not too much to ask that Paris be the capital for
two peoples? The French authorities must agree to prevent French
Parisians from even entering the sacred tomb area, lest this upset the
Corsicans.

The Saint Chapelle and the Church of Notre Dame of course will be
internationalized, under joint Vatican-art historical auspices.
Indeed, the French should consider it a compliment of the highest
order that so many people see Paris as an international city.

The French have nothing to complain of. They will enjoy the benefits
of peace and retain control of the Champs Elysées.

Actually, come to think of it, even the Champs Elysées may be too
much. Recalling the French position that Jerusalem is not the capital
of Israel, perhaps the true French capital is not Paris at all, but
Vichy.

Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa.
1 The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 24, 2000.
2 The Jerusalem Post, Oct. 23, 1996

From Israel’s Bus 300 Affair to the Al-Awlaki Assassination

2011-10-07T00:11:00.000-07:00

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/07/from-israels-bus-300-affair-to-the-al-awlaki-assassination/

From Israel's Bus 300 Affair to the Al-Awlaki Assassination

Posted By Steven Plaut On October 7, 2011

It is perhaps the ultimate irony that the Israeli "Bus 300" affair is
once again popping up in the media just days after the al-Qaeda
terrorist with the US passport, Anwar al-Awlaki, was liquidated by a
drone in Yemen. Many of the points being raised in debate over the
killing of al-Awlaki are the same as those long raised regarding the
Israeli "Bus 300 Affair." In both incidents terrorists were summarily
executed by the intelligence agencies of democratic nations, without
trial and "due process." Both cases are being exploited by the enemies
of those democracies to paint them as "inhumane regimes."

In the Bus 300 Affair, intelligence agents from Israel's Shin Bet
liquidated two terrorists captured after hijacking a bus full of
civilians, mainly women, and threatening to blow them up. The
al-Awlaki affair is far fresher in everyone's mind. Many on the Left,
joined by Ron Paul and some fringe members of the Right, are grumbling
about how al-Awlaki was liquidated "without proper due process and
trial." The eminent professor of law from Berkeley, John Yoo,
probably made the best case for the killing, writing in the Wall
Street Journal:

Yet, from the howls on the left, you would never know that President
Barack Obama had won another victory in the war on terror. Even as
details of the operation leaked out, critics claimed that our
government had "assassinated" an American citizen without due process.
… Worse yet, they get the rights of a nation at war terribly wrong.
Awlaki's killing in no way violates the prohibition on assassination …
[A]ssassination is an act of murder for political purposes. Killing
Martin Luther King Jr. or John F. Kennedy is assassination. Shooting
an enemy soldier in wartime is not. In World War II, the United
States did not carry out an assassination when it sent long-range
fighters to shoot down an air transport carrying the Japanese admiral
Isoroku Yamamoto. American citizens who join the enemy do not enjoy a
roving legal force-field that immunizes them from military reprisal.
President Abraham Lincoln confronted this question at the outset of
the Civil War.

Almost all of the commentators and bloggers who roll their eyes in
mock horror over the execution of the two terrorists in the "Bus 300"
affair refuse to report what actually happened there.

On April 12, 1984, four Arab terrorists who had entered the Israeli
Negev from Gaza commandeered an Israeli civilian bus filled mostly
with women commuters returning home to Ashkelon from their jobs in Tel
Aviv. There were pregnant women among the victims. The terrorists
seized the bus and attempted to drive it towards the Egyptian border.
They were armed with knives and explosives and threatened to blow up
the entire bus with its passengers if stopped. They crashed through
road blocks and were pursued by military jeeps. The bus eventually
was stopped near Gaza City.

The incident took place just a few years after the massacre of bus
passengers by terrorists in another incident along Israel's main
coastal road. Holding the Bus 300 passengers as hostages, the
terrorists demanded the release of 500 jailed terrorists, threatening
to murder the captives if their demands were not met.

The next morning, an Israeli SWAT team stormed Bus 300 and freed the
passengers. Two of the terrorists were killed in the operation. One
Israeli woman on the bus died in the crossfire and seven others were
injured. The Israeli military announced that all four terrorists had
died in the operation. Later it turned out that two of the four had
actually been captured alive and were executed by intelligence agents
on the spot. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
in Syria took credit for the attack, although Israel claimed that
Arafat's Fatah terror organization was responsible.

The incident turned into a "scandal" when an Israeli newspaper called
Hadashot (owned by the radical leftist Haaretz publishing house; it
has since closed), edited by one Yossi Klein, defied Israel's military
censor (which censors news reporting about some sensitive military
matters) and published a photo of one of the captured terrorists being
led away. (Originally published with faces of intelligence officers
blackened out.)

In the aftermath, several Israeli intelligence officers were indicted
for their roles in "covering up" the execution of the two captured
terrorists. All officers would be either exonerated in court or
granted presidential "pardon" before indictment. Careers were damaged
more by the negative publicity than from formal judicial actions. The
head of the Shin Bet at the time was forced to resign. One
intelligence officer named Ehud Yatom proudly boasted of his role in
eliminating the terrorists. He later served as a member of the
Israeli parliament (the Knesset).

An official commission of inquiry then examined activities and
procedures of the intelligence agency.

The Bus 300 affair continues to generate public debate in Israel. It
returns to the headlines whenever any of the figures involved are in
the news, such as when Yatom was to be appointed director of the
Israeli Parks Authority. There have been films, documentaries and
plays about the incident in Israel and elsewhere. The latest is a
Hebrew film recently released titled "A. – Liquidate them!" and it is
generating a lot of public debate.

The Israel far Left has long exploited the incident as a bludgeon
against the supposed "human rights abuses" by the intelligence
services. Yossi Klein, the same bloke who broke the law by running in
Hadashot the photo of the captured terrorist being led away, has been
exploiting the attention he is suddenly again getting and denounced
the Shin Bet for engaging in things that are "immoral and illegal," in
his opinion (Haaretz, October 4, 2011). He has been backed by some of
Israel's most seditious self-hating leftist extremists.

Both the al-Awlaki killing and "Bus 300" actually serve to illustrate
the underlying problem concerning the nature of terrorism.
Terrorists are not soldiers, do not behave as soldiers, and when they
are captured they are not protected by international treaties
regarding prisoners of war. They do not wear uniforms and they
explicitly target civilians for purposes of creating mass panic and
demoralization. By targeting civilians, they defy all norms of human
decency.

At the same time they are not civilian "criminals" and so are not
entitled to the protections and niceties of the judicial system, from
Miranda warnings and legal representation to due process in courts.
Terrorism is neither civilian "crime" nor is it military activity by
soldiers. It is something else, something unique, sui generis.

It is absurd for terrorists to be processed and treated like common
criminals, and it is just as absurd for them to be treated as
prisoners of war. That is why Guantanamo base, waterboarding,
kidnapping terrorists to third countries, and all the rest are methods
that are perfectly sensible parts of anti-terrorism policy, even if
they would be prohibited when dealing with common criminals and with
military prisoners of war.

To put it bluntly, terrorists should be summarily executed, unless
there is some special strategic reason not to kill them (such as
extracting intelligence). Try to imagine that some of the hijackers
involved in the 9-11 attacks had actually been overpowered and
captured by security personnel that fateful day and then the would-be
hijackers had been summarily executed. Or imagine that Osama bin
Laden had first been captured alive and only then executed by American
security forces, after intelligence was extracted from him. Captured
terrorists serve as open invitations to other terrorists to engage in
more terrorism in order to gain their release. John Wilkes Booth was
not read his rights nor provided with legal counsel.

Summary execution of terrorists makes a moral point, that by their
actions terrorists have forfeited any expectation of "due process" in
court and of ordinary protection due to military prisoners of war.
Just as we honor and proclaim publicly the merit of our heroes and
role models, so it makes perfect sense for us to exhibit our disgust
and revulsion with terrorists by liquidating them.

While executing terrorists theoretically risks situations where
innocent people could be killed in error, should proof ever emerge of
such a case occurring, those involved in the error or crime can be
indicted. But the burden of proof that an innocent person was so
killed in an anti-terrorism operation would be upon the prosecution.

The Shin Bet agents who summarily executed the two Bus 300 terrorists,
captured while threatening to blow up a bus full of civilians, behaved
properly. The terrorists involved indeed deserved to be summarily
executed. The agents should have been proclaimed heroes, promoted and
awarded medals.

Those who express "anguish" and "horror" at such extra-judicial
executions are people who prefer that terrorism thrive and flourish.
Execution of terrorists makes them feel squeamish and uncomfortable.
Their comfort is more important to them than preventing more 9-11s and
more mass murders of civilians by terrorists in the Middle East.

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The Recommendations of the "Trajtenberg Commission for Social Change" in Israel

2011-09-27T07:27:00.001-07:00

After much media ballyhoo, at long last the Trachtenberg (or
Trajtenberg, which is actually how he spells his name in Latin
letters) Commission for Social Change in Israel has submitted its
recommendations. They consist of a potpourri of proposals and
recommendations for alterations in economic and social policy in many
different areas. Many sound like they were adopted from the tent
protesters in meetings in which Trajtenberg sought to prove his
sensitivity.

Altogether they consist of about three or four dozen policy proposals.
Many people are asking me what I, as an economist, make of them. I
will not write an in-depth evaluation of the Trachtenberg proposals
here.

Instead, I will content myself with merely noting that out of the 40
or so specific proposals, there are 3 or 4 whose damages would not be
catastrophic if implemented.

The Bribing of the Bedouin

2011-09-18T04:27:00.001-07:00

1. Professor Yehuda Bauer of the Hebrew University is generally
regarded as Israel's leading Holocaust scholar. Bauer however is also
a radical leftist. He is involved in all the usual leftist causes,
even this one, involving suppression of freedom of speech:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142314 and
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=2853

And Professor Bauer, the Holocaust scholar, has a new cause. It is
the promotion of one of the world's worst Holocaust Deniers.

Really.

Bauer is naturally a great advocate of Palestinian statehood, and he
is a toady coddler of Abu Mazen, the head of the Palestinian
Authority. As you no doubt recall, Abu Mazen did a "doctorate" in the
Soviet Union, writing his PhD thesis on how the Holocaust never took
place and is all a Zionist hoax. (See
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000032.html )
Abu Mazen never retracted the "thesis," and it is taught these days in
Palestinian schools.

Two weeks ago Bauer accompanied a group of Israeli
pseudo-intellectuals to Ramallah to make hajj to Abu Mazen. One of
the team, the far-leftist Bash-Orthodox bigot Sefi Rachlevski, then
published his own report of the pow-wow. The leftists were naturally
there to endorse the PLO and naturally never got around to demanding
that the Palestinian Authority do something to stop terror. As it
turns out, the Holocaust and Holocaust denial actual came up briefly
at the meeting.

One of Bauer's friends, another Hebrew University prof named Eliyahu
Richter, took Bauer to task for his toadying up to the Holocaust
Denier. Bauer responded with an even toadier reply to him. Bauer
says he explained to Abu Mazen and to his henchman Saeb Erekat why Abu
Mazen's dissertation is "unacceptable." Abu Mazen simply ignored the
comment. Bauer then responded to Abu Mazen's non-response by
repeating how devoted Bauer really is to Palestinian statehood. And
if Abu Mazen and his people ever get a state, and if that state then
sets up concentration camps for Jews, perhaps Bauer could take up
violin lessons so he can perform at the unloading docks.

2. For years Israel's radical Left, led in this by the extremist
anti-Zionist cheerleader for terrorism Oren Yiftachel (professor of
geography at Ben Gurion "University"), has been attempting to convert
most of the entire Negev into a Bedouin mini-state. And if the Israeli
far Left has its way, Bedouinstan will yet be a mini-state in which
Jews will be prevented from living. Ben Gurion University could be
its capital!

The Bedouin of the Negev were migrating transient nomads who passed in
and out of borders over centuries, moving into and out of the Negev
from the Sinai peninsula, from Saudi Arabia and from Jordan. They
traditionally owned no land at all, and land ownership was an alien
notion for them.

Today, in the year 2011, Negev Bedouins are claiming legal title to
the bulk of land in the Negev, and the radical anti-Zionist Israeli
Left is solidly behind them. How did this develop?

Kalman Liebskind, the great columnist in Maariv, devotes much of his
weekend column to this matter. The answer is astonishing.

The story begins in the early 1970s, under various Labor Party
governments. The regime was interested in maintaining amicable
relations with the Negev Bedouin, but also in defining and settling
legal claims for lands. In reality the Bedouin legally owned nothing.
They just moved their camps and tents around the desert. But the
government was willing to strike a deal whereby the Bedouin could be
granted actual legal ownership over some land, while ending illegal
squatting elsewhere.

In order to conduct the negotiations, the government allowed any
Bedouin who wished to do so to file a claim that his family, his
ancestors, had lived on a certain parcel of land, and his claim would
be considered, together with conflicting legal evidence, once some
overall arrangement would be negotiated. To file such a "claim" the
Bedouin was required to produce no documentation, simply to fill out a
form with an unsubstantiated assertion. These assertions were about
as believable as would be my own claim to own all of Manhattan because
my ancestors traded beads for it with the locals.

No one took the Bedouin "claims" seriously, but the intention was to
use them as a symbolic starting point for negotiations and eventually
allow the filers of the phony claims to retain a few percentage points
of their "claims." That would provide the Bedouin with adequate lands
and they could settle down into real jobs and real houses if they so
chose. The initial Bedouin "claims" were for 200,000 acres.
Including lands on which kibbutzim, moshavim and other Jewish towns
sit.

While no one really considered the Bedouin claims as anything more
than fiction, the state sought a modus vivendi with them in which some
portion of those claims would be accepted as legit. In exchange
Israel thought it could limit the space in which Bedouins would
concentrate and sprawl and also halt the widespread illegal squatting
by Bedouins on other lands they clearly do not own.

As you can imagine, that was a great plan that could only go wrong.
It went super wrong once land values all over Israel shot up into the
stratosphere.

The Israeli government offered to accept the 20% of the imaginary
Bedouin claims as legit if the Bedouins would relinquish the rest of
their fictional claims. The Bedouins of course demanded that Israel
grant 100% of the fictional claims. The Israeli government as usual
was worn down by salami tactics and by its devotion to appeasement.
So at the moment there are "talks" between the government and the
Bedouin to grant them 50% of their fictional claims.

Originally the willingness to strike a deal with the Bedouin was in
large part thanks to the perception that they were more or less
patriotic Israelis who often serve in the security forces. But that
perception is decades out of date. Meanwhile the Negev Bedouin have
been turning increasingly anti-Israel. PLO flags wave in the Negev
Bedouin city of Rahat, and the municipality there refuses to employ
any Jews. Some Bedouins have been involved in espionage and
terrorism. The two worst anti-Israel pro-jihad Knesset members today
are Bedouins.

Meanwhile, Yiftachel and the tenured extremists are running around the
world claiming that Israel is trying to "steal Bedouin lands" and to
deny the Bedouin their "rights." The only solution, insists
Yiftachel, is international sanctions and pressure upon Israel to
grant the Bedouins 100% of their fictional claims.

The willingness of the government to appease and coddle anti-Israel
radical Bedouins is best illustrated in the amazing story of the
bribery of Taleb a-Sana by Yitzhak Rabin, also discussed in
Liebskind's column. From one of the small Arab fascist parties,
a-Sana should have been jailed years ago for anti-Israel activity. He
makes no attempt at disguising his detestation of Israel and Jews.
Now it turns out that back when Yitzhak Rabin was still trying to
shove his "peace accords" with the barbarians through the Knesset, he
needed a-Sana's vote to duck a motion of non-confidence (which would
topple the government and force new elections). Rabin's junta struck
a dirty deal with a-Sana and his family, turning over 38 acres of
prime state-owned land on which a-Sana built a huge mansion and on
which he runs a sort of ranch. A photo of the mansion accompanies the
Liebskind column. The Ewing family of Dallas lived in a tenement by
comparison. In exchange, Rabin got his vote and survived the motion.
If I tried to erect a window pane on a porch I would have the
government inspectors breathing down my throat and threatening me
within 24 hours.

The a-Sana family members were granted an additional 70 plots of land.
A-Sana was also paid "compensation" for giving up a series of
illegally constructed homes erected on public lands by his family and
a freezing of various suits and indictments against a-Sana and his
family for illegal construction. The "deal" was brokered by Benjamin
"Fuad" Ben Eliezer, a minister in the cabinet, at Rabin's request.

The Oslo "Accods" then produced thousands of dead Israelis.

3. http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=238142
Editor's Notes: Delegitimizing the deligitimizers
By STEVE LINDE
09/16/2011 17:08

4. I was just told that the Rabbi of the Reform synagogue in Hanover,
New Hampshire has announcd that on Yom Kippur, part of the afternoon
"service" will consist of a performance by a Shostakovitch trio played
in the "shul." Just in case you want to drive on over.

5. Obama's kibitzing in Israeli politics:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=344985