Sunday, July 31, 2011
The Israeli Left’s Favorite Pedophile
thousands of protesters (or, if you write for Haaretz, 150,000
protesters, all standing in a square that can hold 40,000) taking to
the streets to posture their concern for the downtrodden and their
demands for "social justice." While no two protesters seem to want
the same things, most of them agree that the highest form of social
justice is to turn over public funds to themselves – to those who are
protesting. The communist party is playing a major role, and hammers
and sickles and PLO flags are to be seen in the protests. Few of the
protesters seem to understand that their two main demands are mutually
contradictory: "Lower taxes on the middle class" and "Raise spending
for welfare and for the poor." Why not demand cold fires and dry
water?
The most common slogans of the protesters consist of denunciations of
the "tycoons." The protesters are convinced that everything wrong
with their lives is the fault of tycoons. The wife had a headache
last night? It was the fault of the tycoons. Never mind that most of
the tycoons were made tycoons back in the days of Labor Party
socialism thanks to their crony ties with the socialist politicians!
The Likud enriched its OWN tycoons, proving it is no longer necessary
in Israel to be a socialist in order to be a tycoon or an oligarch.
I must say that I personally am getting a lot of mileage out of the
tycoon fetish sweeping the country.
For example, the Missus confronted me yesterday to demand to know why
the toilet seat was up instead of down. "The tycoons left it that
way," was my reply. The dishes were not up to snuff after I washed
them? The tycoons must have left them dirty! I run up to the meter
maid about to ticket my car and scream at her to desist from the
ticketing cause the tycoons put my car in that illegal parking slot.
You get the idea.
2. A few days I posted a note about the latest Supreme Court
atrocity in Israel. It involved the ruling by the Court that the
pro-terror propagandist and film producer Mohammed Bakri may have lied
his fangs off but was judged not guilty of any "defamation." Not even
when he called Israeli soldiers involved in the Battle of Jenin Nazis.
Not even when he falsely claimed they massacred Arabs. Not even when
he accuses IDF soldiers of being murderous drooling dogs. None of
that is defamation because, after all, Bakri never criticized the
illegal pro-terror treasonous public political activities of an
anti-Semitic university lecturer.
The judge who headed that Supreme Court panel and who wrote the absurd
verdict was leftist Yoram Danziger. Like most of his colleagues on
the Supreme Court bench, he is a radical leftist and used to be on the
board of the Far-Leftist misnamed Association for Civil Rights in
Israel, a sort of a cross between the ACLU and the Baath Party.
The very same Danziger is in the news for other things this week. He
may become the first Supreme Court judge (maybe even the first judge)
in Israel to end up in prison for corruption.
The Israeli Attorney General is about to make recommendations as to
whether Danziger should be tried for corruption. It will surprise me
if the Attorney General recommends that he should be, since under the
Israeli dual justice system it is the job of leftist prosecutors to
shield other leftists. The problem is that Danziger's track record
stinks to high heaven and the Attorney General may have no choice but
to recommend prosecution.
Danziger's odoriferous past goes back to the days when he was a
municipal legal counselor in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam. In
general, the worst corruption in Israel is at the municipality level,
and many a mayor or senior municipal official could never get a
position in Third World countries because the Israeli officials are
too corrupt for those countries. The mayor of Bat Yam, Shlomo
Lachiani, is under investigation for such corruption, including
bribery. And Danziger was his legal sidekick during much of the time
when alleged criminal activity was taking place there. Danziger had
ties with Lachiani even before the latter became mayor and provided
legal services to the municipality once Lachiani was calling the shots
there. Both Danziger and Lachiani are major stockholders in the
company that puts out the local Bat Yam weekly newspaper. As mayor,
Lachiani funneled large amounts of municipal funds into that
newspaper, buying up large ads, and guess who benefited from those
allotments of public funds.
If the Attorney General indeed recommends criminal investigation
procedures against Danziger, he will be forced to resign from the
bench. That means that the next time the Supreme Court needs to clear
an anti-Semitic Arab terrorist or to suppress freedom of speech, some
other judge will have to do it.
And if Danziger ends up in prison, the irony is that he will not even
be able to use Mohammed Bakri as his prison honey because Bakri is
running about outside free.
3. You may recall the baby murderer Samir Kuntar, who murdered babies
during his terrorist raid on Nahariya, who was released by Israel in
that ultra-disgraceful "exchange" in which Israel released more than
400 terrorists to buy back the corpses of three Israeli soldiers
murdered by the Hezb'Allah in cold blood plus one live drug smuggling
criminal. Since then Kuntar has been the persona grata of the
Lebanese paparazzi and darling of the jihadis. Well, there are
reports out of Lebanon that he was blown up in an explosion in Beirut
over the weekend, and we are waiting to learn if Kuntar is with his
virgins.
But I am concerned about something else. While in Israeli prison,
Kuntar was allowed to do a BA via distance learning at Israel's Open
University. Lots of terrorists do the same. So if he has been blown
to smithereens, doesn't that mean all that academic training and
enlightenment will be lost to the world?
4. For years one of the worst anti-Israel leftist extremists in
Israel has been one Ezra Nawi. Because he was both anti-Israel and
gay, he became the hero and mentor of some of the worst anti-Semites
on earth. Better yet, he is a convicted pedophile. He has been
celebrated by Neve Gordon and Noam Chomsky, among others. For
example, here is Gordon proclaiming Nawi his idol, in the anti-Semitic
Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon05082009.html As you can see
there, Gordon claims Nazi was arrested for "caring about people's
homes." Sure and Gordon was hired and promoted at Ben Gurion
"University" thanks to his being a serious scholar.
The great irony of course is that Nawi, this darling of Palestinian
terrorism, would himself be tortured and murdered for being gay if he
were to fall into the hands of certain Palestinian peace organizations
like the Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. An Israeli court on
March 19, 2009 convicted Nawi of violently attacking a police officer
and engaging in violence in an anti-Israel protest.
Well, this darling of the Israeli Left and the Caring Classes is
suddenly back in the news, for pederasty. It seems that Nawi was
involved in some illicit relations with a minor. And his crimes are
threatening to end the political career of a candidate for the Irish
Presidency.
Nawi was convicted in 1992 of sexual relations with a 15 year old boy.
Nawi is also chummy with the Irish Senator David Norris, now running
for Pres. When Nawi was indicted for sexually molesting a minor,
Norris rushed to defend him and even sent a letter praising Nawi to
the Israeli court where Nawi was being tried. In that trial, by the
way, the star witness for Nawi was Yehudit Karp, a Meretz politician
who had been the deputy Attorney General. Her "testimony" did not
help Nawi.
The Irish media got wind of Norris's ties to the convicted pedophile
and are making life tough for Norris. Many members of his staff
suddenly resigned. The media in Ireland smell blood.
Nawi is walking about free, but I still like to sit back and imagine
his sharing a prison cell with Judge Danziger.
Friday, July 29, 2011
An Open Letter to a Tent Protester
Dear S:
Thank you for your note clarifying the reasons for your
participating in the tent protests in Tel Aviv and for clarifying your
demands for "affordable housing alternatives."
I must say that I was a little unclear as to why you think there
do not exist "affordable housing alternatives" in Israel and why you
think it is the responsibility of the government to provide them for
you.
First, you have made it clear that while you are interested in
finding affordable housing in Northern Tel Aviv, you would also be
willing to consider living in a two- or three-bedroom unit in Ramat
Aviv, Ramat Gan, and – if nothing else can be found – in Givatayim.
Second, you have explained to me that since your current
household take-home income is $2500 per month, affordable housing for
you (if purchased) should be a housing unit costing at the very most
$125,000 (or about 420,000 NIS), which would be 50 times your monthly
take-home income. In other words, in theory if you worked 50 months
and spent nothing at all, you could save up this amount for a housing
unit, which you regard as "affordable."
Let me point out to you that there is no problem at all for you to
obtain affordable housing in Northern Tel Aviv. And to do so you do
not need the approval of Bibi Netanyahu, the government of Israel, the
Minister of Housing, the capitalist class or even business professors.
There are tens of thousands of privately-owned housing units in
Northern Tel Aviv and in the other areas where you would like to live.
These are owned by private individuals, not the government. All you
need to do is find one single existing owner of a unit you would like
to buy and persuade him or her to sell it to you for 420,000 NIS.
If you can negotiate such a transaction, you do not need ANYONE
else to approve of it. It does not matter if Bibi Netanyahu approves
or disapproves. You are not dependent at all on approval from any
"capitalists." After all, it is unlikely that the seller with whom
you will engage in the transaction is even a capitalist at all, other
than perhaps in the sense of owning some capital in a Provident Funds
(Kupot Gemel) or a pension fund. You would not need approval from
anyone else.
Except of course from the seller.
As long as the seller is willing to sell you the property at the
affordable price you offer, nothing at all stands in your way. You
will have found affordable housing in the areas where you want to
live. And all you need is that one single cooperative seller, out of
a total population of tens of thousands of property owners. You
certainly need not persuade ME of ANTHING! After all, I own no
property in Tel Aviv.
I concede of course that you could run up against one minor
difficulty. And that is that the owner of the property you would like
to buy might prefer to sell it to someone else for three or four or
five times the amount you are willing to offer him. Of course, no one
is stopping you from trying to persuade him to sell it to you for YOUR
affordable price, and if you are successful in persuading him, I am
the first who will send you a housewarming gift!
And to tell you the truth, if you actually found someone willing
to sell you a 3 bedroom flat in Northern Tel Aviv at your affordable
price, I myself would be tempted to offer the seller several times
more than that to buy the same unit in your place. But in
consideration for yourself and you wife, I will sit out this round of
bidding and not interfere.
Now it is of course conceivable that you will discover that none
of those private property owners of housing units in Northern Tel Aviv
and in the other areas where you are searching is willing to sign a
deal with you for your affordable price. It is not because Bibi told
them not to sign with you and it is not because the capitalist class
ordered them not to. It is because the sellers prefer to get a higher
price to getting a lower price.
I understand that the demand by you and your comrades-at-tents is
that if you cannot find affordable housing in the areas you are
searching at the prices you are willing to offer, then the government
of Israel should either hand to you the difference between the asking
price and your affordable price, or arrange for other machinations
that end up achieving the same result. Where you can pay your
affordable price to get a housing unit whose asking price is much
higher.
Now there are some complications with your idea of having the
government of Israel hand you free money for purchasing housing. One
problem is that the money has to come from someplace else or someone
else. Yes, I realize your favorite solution is to "soak the rich"
and raise the taxes on "the rich" so that there will be enough money
for handouts to you. But there are some problems with that idea as
well.
The first difficulty is that I think you will find that "soak the
rich" taxes generate far, far less tax revenue than you think they do.
But even if they could generate as much as in your socialist fantasy,
what makes you think that the Israeli electorate wants those funds
given to YOU?? After all, those funds have LOTS of uses, and there
are lots of people who would like to have those funds granted to THEM!
In a vote by the public, either a direct vote via ballot
initiative (you know, that idea the law professors in Israel keep
insisting is anti-democratic) or by the elected representatives of the
people, what makes you think it is the will of the people that any
extra funds taken from the rich or diverted from other government
budgets should be awarded to YOU? Is it because you demand
affordable housing in greater Tel Aviv while sleeping in a tent?
Let me drum this point home a bit more. You and your wife are
graduate students. The vast majority of Israelis never attend
university. Those who attend university and get only a BA earn far
more money on average than those who do not attend college. That
means first of all that the Israelis who do NOT attend college and
earn far less on average than those who DO attend college already paid
for 70% or so of the costs of your college education. Once you earned
your BA you joined the portion of the population that out-earns on
average those who do not attend college. And now you want to persuade
that same majority of Israelis who do not attend college that the very
best use of fiscal resources is to hand them over to you so you can
buy housing in greater Tel Aviv while only spending an amount you have
defined as affordable.
I gotta tell you the truth. In a ballot initiative, if the
general public were asked to approve of your plan, it would not stand
a chance.
I do not see much difference if the affordable housing you want in
Tel Aviv is rental housing and not purchased housing. Once again, no
one is stopping you from convincing any of those many thousands of
owners of private housing units to lease them to you at rents you
regard as affordable. I cannot make them agree to do so, and neither
can Bibi or anyone else. If you are successful and persuade one to
rent to you at what you regard as an affordable rent, I will send you
a housewarming gift.
There is one other problem with your idea of raising taxes to
generate resources that can be handed to you. Among those who would
be taxed are many Israeli families who purchased housing in the past,
never at affordable prices, and who did so by working hard and long
and saving what they earned. You are welcome to try to persuade them
to vote for representatives who will tax themselves in order to hand
over resources to you so that you can buy affordable housing. But I
would not bet my own salary on your being successful in that campaign
of persuasion.
Finally, you and your tent comrades are pretending that you are not
simply out for handouts, but are generally "socially concerned" with
poverty and hardship in Israel and that is why you demand major
reforms in policy from the government. You are crusaders for social
justice. You kind of lost me there.
If you are seriously concerned with hardship and poverty and
inequality in Israel, why is the main proposal you are marketing that
the government provide YOU with housing you say you can afford. You
have a BA already and are working on a second degree. Only a tiny
portion of Israelis get second degrees. You could not find anyone
more in need of handouts than YOU?
Second, why do you need Bibi and the government to change policy as
a means to assist the needy and those in hardship? Why wait for Bibi?
Who is stopping YOU from stepping up and helping the needy and those
in hardship right now? Who is stopping YOU from engaging in Tzedaka?
Since when is the only legitimate form of Tzedaka the nationalized
form, where the government takes away people's wealth to help those in
hardship? Why not some privatized Tzedaka?
Oh, and since mankind has yet to come up with a set of policies
that eliminate poverty and hardship and inequality, and no society on
earth has managed to do that (although quite a few have succeeded in
making poverty and hardship much WORSE), I am sure we would all be
grateful to hear about the magical set of plans YOU have that will
accomplish this mission for the first time in human history.
Beer Sheba Rabbi Murdered by Leftist Rhetoric and Government Harassment!!
incitement in the country, especially now that it has produced the
cold-blooded murder of Rabbi Elazar Abuhatzeira. The Rabbi, aged 70,
was grandson of the famous Moroccan Jewish kabbalist, the Baba Sali.
(http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4101678,00.html ) He was
stabbed to death by a 42 year old Jewish man. Clearly the murderer
was inspired by the anti-Rabbinic barbaric rhetoric that has become so
common in Israel.
Ok, I am being facetious.
The rabbi was not murdered by rhetoric. He was murdered by a deranged nut.
But let us bear in mind that this is the same Israel in which the
entire political establishment, the entire media, and much of
academia, have been chanting nonstop in mindless unison since 1995
that unrestrained political discourse produces murder. The Supreme
Court of the country agrees, and proclaims rhetoric that involves
criticism of illegal acts treason to be defamation.
The political establishment has proclaimed that the exercise of
freedom of speech by non-leftists produces assassination and murder.
The Israeli government itself has been leading the campaign against
the "incitement" and "racism" of Rabbis. That is why it has been
harassing and arresting so many Rabbis. I do not know what the
ideological and political opinions of the Rabbi Abuhatzeira were, but
if he had not been murdered this week it would not have surprised me
if Shai Nitzan, the leftist Deputy Attorney General, and his little
gang of crusaders against democracy would have arrested the Rabbi.
And then we have the latest anencephelic (that means born without a
brain) mantras coming from the liberuhs and the Left in Europe and the
US. They insist that the reason a Christian Norwegian Neo-Nazi
conducted mass murders of Christian Norwegians is because of
Right-wing web sites that criticize Islamist terrorism and Arab
fascism. The Jews of course are also to blame, insist a growing
number of anti-Semitic web pages. (Here is one you will enjoy:
http://kapodickie.blogspot.com/2011/07/silverstein-blames-jews-for-norway.html
) Why the Jews? Well, after all, Jews are also active in
criticizing Islamofascism and Arab terrorism, so the Norwegian
murderer must have been inspired by them. Without those Jewish
inciters, young Breivik would have taken up ice fishing.
So if anti-immigrant organizations in Europe and websites that
denounce Islamofascism caused the Norwegian Breivik to shoot and bomb,
and if Rabbis suggesting that Jewish women date only Jewish men are
genocidal inciters and inspirers of murderers, responsible for the
Rabin assassination, then surely we can all agree that the fashionable
secularist defamation and harassment of Rabbis in Israel produced the
murder of Rabbi Abuhatzeira! It is all Shai Nitzan's fault!
I mentioned this earlier, but it is worth repeating, now that the
Norwegian ambassador to Israel is justifying Palestinian terrorism,
and distinguishing it from the "Norwegian terrorism." Dersh has a
nice piece on this here: You see, killing Scandinavians is bad.
They are blond. But killing Jews is understandable and justifiable.
Jews are Untermenschen.
The fact of the matter is that the Norwegian killings, horrific though
they may be, were not acts of terrorism at all. They were more like
the Columbine shootings, murderous acts of the deranged, with no real
ideological motivation. The killer Breivik is far more Charles Manson
than he is Yassir Arafat.
Terrorism is what Arab fascists do. It is ideologically and
religiously motivated. Its aim is ultimately genocidal.
That is why the Norwegian Eurotrash thinks it is acceptable.
And that is why a Palestinian state should be erected only in Norway.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
I Protest therefore I Deserve Cheap Housing Paid for by YOU!
protests and marches over housing prices. The media are proclaiming
this a dramatic social revolution, something like those revolts in
Tunisia and Egypt. One cannot read three sentences in the newspapers
or listen to the radio without hearing pontifications about "social
justice" and "social revolt." Indeed, media commentator after media
commentator insists that "All Israelis are now leftists," because
leftism is synonymous with the quest for social justice, and Israelis
suddenly care out it. Just who told them that the leftist agenda
produces social justice is not clear.
The Left itself sees the street grumblings over housing as rescuing
it from its oblivion. Netanyahu himself has been forced to put
everything else on the back burner and concentrate on making public
relations gestures to appease and co-opt the tentsters, those bored
middle-class-yuppie kids spending their break in between semesters in
makeshift protest tents in Israeli city centers. The New Israel Fund
provided the tents.
Just what changed so suddenly to persuade so many seemingly
rational people that Israel suddenly is in a major housing crisis? I
mean, weren't housing prices also high 6 months ago? So what changed?
The answer is – Israelis convinced themselves that the cottage cheese
protests held a few weeks back are the solution to economic problems
and the only way to produce "social justice." If you make a lot of
noise, get on TV, and whine about how unfortunate you are, you can
force the political demagogues to buy you off. So why get a job and
work hard and save when you can force Bibi and his chums to provide
you with subsidized housing units at well below market prices? If
you strip away the codpiece off the set of housing "reform" proposals
that the government has been marketing, none of them actually will
bring housing prices down. All they really will do is to boost the
profit rates of insider construction contractors, those cronies of the
politicians who will get sweetheart deals on land sales marketed below
market prices.
So is there really a housing crisis and emergency in Israel? No,
there is a summer boredom emergency of pampered teenagers and 20 year
olds.
Here are some inconvenient facts:
From 1997 to 2007 housing in Israel got cheaper, dramatically so!
From 1997 to 2007, nominal housing prices in Israel rose 19%, compared
with 24% for the consumer price index, which means a real price
decrease of less than 1% per year, and that was without adjusting for
the fact that housing quality is slowly increasing and units slowly
getting largely, which distorts the statistics (and means
quality-controlled housing measures got even cheaper). From 1996
until 2008, the Israeli real (inflation-adjusted) prices for housing
dropped continuously, losing about 20% of value on average. While
prices started rising fairly rapidly in 2009, by the beginning of 2011
they had essentially simply reverted to their real levels (after
adjusting for inflation), from the late 1990s. See
http://www.bankisrael.gov.il/deptdata/neumim/neum397h.pdf Oh and
measuring housing prices in dollars is highly misleading because of
the rapid collapse in the world value of the dollar.
It is true that prices in Tel Aviv are higher than elsewhere and rose
faster than elsewhere, but there are large swaths of the country where
prices have not risen at all or not by much. Sales of newly
constructed Israeli housing units were 50% higher in 2010 than in
2008. In the central (Tel Aviv metropolitan area) district they were
almost three times as high. Of course, those tentsters insisting that
living in Northern Tel Aviv is an entitlement and inalienable natural
right will not care about that. Funny how residency on Park Avenue in
NY was never considered a natural right.
During recent years when prices were rising in Israel, they rose
considerably less rapidly than housing prices in many other developed
countries. (But not the US, where prices have crashed)
High housing prices hurt some people and benefit other people. They
are obviously NOT an unambiguous curse.
The main reasons for the recent rises in Israeli housing prices,
especially in Tel Aviv, are all demand side, and demand factors are
causing the bidding up of those prices. An important reason for this
is mortgage credit, which was made extremely cheap (for a while with
interest under 3%) by Bank of Israel policy. The Bank of Israel was
concerned about employment in Israel during the global crash and
printed up lots of money and drove down interest rates. One can
debate how wise that was, but it had a strong impact on the housing
market.
The quantity of mortgage credit in Israel rocketed up, rising more
than 50% from 2007-2011. In late 2010 the Bank of Israel started
making noises about reining in mortgage credit. They have not had
much effect to date. Loose and cheap mortgage credit allows people to
bid high prices for existing housing units and drives prices high.
Ironically, the only effective short-term policy that can bring
housing prices down rapidly is to make it much more difficult for
Israelis to be able to afford housing, and to make Israelis
considerably poorer. That is not exactly what the tentsters and the
"social justice" posturers are seeking!
In addition, Israelis are getting wealthier, and higher income and
wealth feed into the housing market and drive prices up.
Israeli salaries (not household income) rose on average about 20%
since 2005 (fluctuating from quarter to quarter), which resembles the
real rise in housing prices after 2008.
Technically on the supply side, although probably just a reflection of
the boom in housing demand, construction materials in Israel have
risen since 2004 about 25% faster than CPI.
See more here:
http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Middle-East/Israel/Price-History
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
One more Outrage from Israel's Supreme Court
Israel's Supreme Court continues its battle against democracy and
freedom of speech. To be more precise, it defends defamation as
"protected speech" whenever the defamatory comments are made by
radical Leftists or by pro-terror Arab nationalists, while labeling
exercise of freedom of speech by non-leftists as defamation.
In the latest twist, the Supreme Court has ruled that a vile
anti-Semitic propaganda film by Arab propagandist Mohammed Bakri is
"not defamatory." The film "Jenin Jenin" invented lies about Israeli
soldiers supposedly massacring innocent Arabs in the battle, and that
according to the "Palestinians," almost all of them terrorists, while
Israel lost 23 men.) A group of Israeli soldiers involved in the
battle sued Bakri for libeling them. For a while the Israeli film
board banned the film altogether, but then the tenured Left decided to
start screening it on campus as part of the academic jihad, and the
ban was dropped.
The film is a tissue of lies, some of which have been documented here:
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=18817 Bakri has denounced
Israeli soldiers as murderous "drooling dogs," but of course has never
been indicted under the Israeli law against insulting public servants
(see http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4038674,00.html). He
also calls them Nazis. So guess whom the Court has NOT convicted of
the offense of using Holocaust-era rhetoric in political discourse!!
The Supreme Court just issued its ruling that Bakri is NOT guilty of
defamation. The ruling was written by the leftist judge Yoram
Danziger, who used to be on the board of the radical Far-Leftist NGO
misnamed "Association for Civil Rights in Israel." The ACRI is also
opposed to freedom of speech for non-leftists.
SO let us see if we have this straight. Bakri calls Israeli soldiers
Nazis and murderous dogs, and that is protected speech. But
criticizing the illegal pro-terror public political behavior of Neve
Gordon and referring to his group of friends serving as human shields
for murderers as a group of "Judenrat wannabe" is not only defamation
but is a violation of the (non-existent except in the minds of the
judges) Israeli prohibition against using "Holocaust era rhetoric in
political discourse." And the Court gave Gordon an award of 2500 NIS
on top of that.
The bottom line is clear. Israel's Supreme Court continues to issue
partisan politicized leftist "rulings." It defends freedom of speech
for Israel-hating Arab fanatics and radical anti-Israel Jewish
leftists, but not for anyone else. My guess is that at least half and
maybe 2/3 of Israel's current Supreme Court judges identify with the
5% of Israeli public opinion that is furthest to the Left.
Accepting Arab slander
Op-ed: In name of freedom of expression, Israel fails to punish
creator of Arab 'documentary'
Yoaz Hendel http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4041127,00.html
The word "lie" in Arabic is associated with a prevalent way of life in
the Middle East. As not to be confused here, it's important to clarify
that we are not dealing with minor untruths, but rather, provocative,
blatant and insistent lies.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court held a hearing on the lie
produced by Mohammed Bakri in the film Jenin, Jenin. One of the
prominent scenes in the movie shows IDF soldiers forcing Palestinian
detainees to lie down on the ground with their hands tied behind their
backs; a tank approaches, and a frightened voice in the backdrop
announces that the tank is running over the people.
The scene ends with bodies on a stretcher. Later on we are treated to
interviews with residents who describe soldiers shooting the elderly,
women and babies. The story is accompanied with music and images of
the ruins.
Bakri explains that these are his artistic tendencies – intermixing
scenes, voices and images and editing one-sidedly; lying in order to
"tell" the story of what happened in IDF Operation Defensive Shield.
Had this been a case of fulfilling his personal fantasy – Jews in the
role of Nazis and Palestinians in the role of sacrificial lambs –it
would have been annoying and prompt a different kind of discussion.
However, Bakri seemingly produced a documentary. Under the guise of
art and with a budget that came from unclear sources he sinned, lied,
and mostly slandered everyone who fought and was killed in Jenin.
Legal system stuttering
A libel suit was a called-for step. With the support of the bereaved
families, the soldiers turned to the court, which ruled that Bakri
lied and did not act in good faith. However, this wasn't enough. In
the name of freedom of expression and fears of entanglement, the
judges refrained from punishing the film's producer and the affair
dragged on through appeals.
One could have expected the State of Israel, which sent its troops to
fight in Jenin, to offer automatic support in battling the slanderer.
However, that is not the case. For eight years now, this battle is
being managed by citizens who are financing from their own money the
fight against the stain on their reputation during their reserve
service.
The State only joined the lawsuit from the sidelines, the legal system
is stuttering, and if this isn't enough, some people around here are
displaying lovely solidarity with Bakri and his artistic lies; a long
list of TV producers, actors, theaters, and of course Arab Knesset
members who miss no opportunity to do the wrong thing for their
constituents.
Yet Bakri was right about one thing this week. We are all "drooling
dogs." In the name of freedom of expression we nurture
de-legitimization and lies.
For more on Israel's Supreme Cult, see
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/the_threat_to_israeli_liberties_from_the_israeli_supreme_court.html
Also: http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/49172
2. In the post-survivalist Israel of Bibi Netanyahu: it is now
official! Thou shalt not sing (on the Temple Mount, unless you are a
Moslem)!
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/146134
Women Who Sang on Temple Mount Barred by Police
The rules on the Temple Mount are unique. Jews may not pray; Muslims
play soccer. Police bar a group of women who allegedly broke the
rules.
Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The rules on the Temple Mount are unique for Jews: No singing, no
prayer books and certainly not a Torah scroll, but Muslim can play
soccer outside their holy mosques while Arab workers remove dirt
containing archeological proof of the destroyed Jewish Temples.
Police have barred a group of women who allegedly broke the rules and sang.
The police restriction applies to the "Women's Forum, for the Temple
Mount," who four times in the past several months have been granted
permission to ascend the holy site, where Israel has surrendered
religious authority to the Muslin "Waqf."
Police refused a request from them to visit the Temple Mount next
Wednesday, during the nine days of mourning leading up to the Ninth of
Av, the Hebrew date when the First and Second Temples were destroyed.
Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told Arutz Sheva that at least one
of the women sang on the Tempe Mount during the last visit and
continued to do as after being warned. Temple Mount activist Yehuda
Glick replied that she stopped immediately ad was not evicted.
"The police are making excuses," he charged. Rosenfeld said the
request to visit the site still is being re-studied.
The spokesman also noted that a man who took out a small Torah scroll
n the Temple Mount also was expelled and invesigated. Glick said that
the man was not part of groups who regularly visit.
Glick also has been barred by the police, who said that no permission
is given to anyone who violates government and High Court decisions
against blatant Jewish activity that could cause a provocation among
Muslims.
3. Uncle Sam funs terrorism:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0711/tobin.php3?printer_friendly
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Yaso
you the exact moment when I fell in love with her. It was the first
and only time that I watched "A Star is Born," Israel's analogue to
"American Idol." It is not something I voluntarily watch. But I was
in the hospital ward after surgery, unable to get up to turn the TV
off. And that is where it happened.
You probably have already heard of her. Hagit Yaso is the Israeli
Ethiopian Jewish woman superstar who has knocked the socks off the
entire country. The 21 year old (see her photo here:
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRtl-41yuvMni3qERCV3Ao3JC1X318xi3vwrK7VK_UnmWmyZ_C-
) won the last round of the song contest, held last night on the Haifa
beach (no I was not there). But even before that, she had rocketed
within just a few weeks to becoming one of the most recognized persons
in the country. Hers is being described everywhere as the Israeli
"Cinderella story." She lives with her struggling parents and family
in Sderot, the town at which the barbarians most like to fire rockets,
and she works as an assistant daycare provider in a kibbutz nearby.
And she sings like an angel.
From out of nowhere she emerged to take the entire country by storm.
Instead of the bubblegum pop songs usually featured in the Israeli
singing contest, she stands with quiet dignity, singing with pathos,
including a song based on Ethiopian melodies in Hebrew, with Amharic
(Ethiopian) sentences mixed in. Rather than downplaying her Ethiopian
identify, she celebrates it. And there is never a dry eye in the
house when she does. In the hospital ward I had chills running up and
down my spine as she sang, and it was not from the medications!
I have confessed to my Missus that I am in love with Hagit. My Missus
does not seem to mind, as long as I do my chores, since the only
conceivable relation I could have with Hagit would be if she were to
offer to walk me across the busy street. Besides, the wife was long
used to me also being in love with singer Ofra Haza, before Ofra's
tragic end. Hagit is inevitably being compared with Ofra, that other
Cinderella story. Ofra had emerged from a low-income Yemenite family
in a Tel Aviv slum to take the country by storm and hold it in her
palm for years. Hagit's winning performance last night was with a
song made famous by Ofra. Yes, and of course this all makes a
mockery out of the "Israel is an Apartheid State" claims of the
Hitlerjugend.
For those of you who understand such things, Hagit has a facebook at
http://he-il.facebook.com/pages/Hagit-Yaso%D7%97%D7%92%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%99%D7%90%D7%A1%D7%95/212294138797621
You can see her singing in a youtube clip at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOiJxgrzlIc and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsIANYhs3b0 and they have other clips
you can find by searching youtube for hagit yaso.
2. Bibi Netanyahu, who really should be called Bibi Peresyahu, was
not content with sabotaging the recent Knesset initiative to demand
transparency in the finances of subversive anti-Israel leftist NGO's
operating in Israel. So these picayune groups can continue to strive
for Israel's elimination using the generous funds of anti-Israel
groups and governments from around the world, all thanks to Bibi.
Bibi's latest is that he now wants to issue an apology to Turkey for
Israeli soldiers defending themselves against the Flotilla terrorists.
Sure, it will be a watered down namby pamby apology, but he still
says he wants to apologize to the Turks for allowing Israeli soldiers
to be beaten by Turkish terrorists. An apology by Peresyahu is indeed
in order, but it should be an apology to Israelis.
I know that if Bibi really issues such an apology to the Saracens, I
will never ever vote Likud again.
Will Bibi's next initiative be an apology to Germany for the
mistreatment of all those Germans by Jews in the 1930s?
3. It turns out that the day BEFORE The Oslo mass murders, the very
same teenagers in the Norwegian Labor Party camp who were targeted on
that island had issued a call for an international boycott of Israel.
See this: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4099122,00.html
4. Palestinians against the Bible:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/146005
Norway
Anders Beivik imagined cautious alliance with Jihadists: "We both
share one common goal"
Cross-Post, July 23rd 2011, 10:00 pm
by Joseph W
He said:
An alliance with the Jihadists might prove beneficial to both parties
but will simply be too dangerous (and might prove to be ideologically
counter-productive). We both share one common goal. They want control
over their own countries in the Middle East and we want control of our
own countries in Western Europe. A future cultural conservative
European regime will deport all Muslims from Europe and isolate the
Muslim world. As a result, the Islamists will gain the necessary
momentum to retake power in several countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Oman, Algeria, Morocco and a few others.
The Jihadists know this very well. An Islamic Caliphate is a useful
enemy to all Europeans as it will ensure European unity under
Christian cultural conservative leadership.
How this type of scenario could play out:
Approach a representative from a Jihadi Salafi group. Get in contact
with a Jihadi strawman. Present your terms and have him forward them
to his superiors:
1. Ask for "hudna" (temporary truce) during the discussions/proposal
and demand assurances not to be harmed if they reject our offer. Ask
if this is acceptable to them.
2. If they accept, try to meet at a neutral place (not like there is a
neutral place on Muslim territory) or at least a relatively public
place (which will make it harder for them to betray your arrangement)
and present your offer. They are asked to provide a biological
compound manufactured by Muslim scientists in the Middle East. Hamas
and several Jihadi groups have labs and they have the potential to
provide such substances. Their problem is finding suitable martyrs who
can pass "screenings" in Western Europe.
2. URL to article:
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/07/20/the-quislings-of-norway/
"We no longer recognize the State of Israel. We could notֲ recognize
the apartheid regime of South Africa, nor did we recognize theֲ
Afghani Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize
Saddam Husseinג€™s Iraq or the Serbsג€™ ethnic cleansing. We need to
get used to the idea: The State of Israel, in its current form, is
history. The State of Israel has raped the recognition of the world
and shall have no peace until it laysֲ down its arms."....FOREIGN
MINISTER OF NORWAY
---
The Quislings of Norway
Posted By Joseph Klein On July 20, 2011 @ 12:43 am In Daily
Mailer,FrontPage | 33 Comments
Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere
The infamous Norwegian Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany as
it conquered his own country, must be applauding in his grave.
In the latest example of Norwegian collaboration with the enemies of
the Jews, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere declared during
a press conference this week, alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas, that "Norway believes it is perfectly legitimate for the
Palestinian president to turn to the United Nations" to seek
recognition of an independent Palestinian state.
Despite Abbas's decision to throw his lot in with the Hamas terrorists
as part of some sort of "unity" government, Stoere signed an agreement
with Abbas on upgrading Palestinian representation in Norway. Under
the agreement, which effectively rewards Abbas for joining forces with
Hamas, the Palestinian representative will have the full diplomatic
rank of ambassador.
The foreign minister of Norway, which chairs a group of Palestinian
donor nations, also used the occasion to hold the tin cup out for
Abbas. Foreign Minister Stoere chided those who have decided to hold
back on their contributions. "All donors should make an extra effort
to support the Palestinians this summer and autumn," he said.
None of this should come as a surprise. Let's not forget, for example,
that Foreign Minister Stoere is in charge of the same Norwegian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which Socialist Ingrid Fiskaa — who
said in April 2008 that she sometimes wished the United Nations would
send "precision-guided missiles against selected Israeli targets" — so
proudly serves as a state secretary.
During the Nazi occupation of Norway, nearly all Jews were either
deported to death camps or fled to Sweden and beyond. Today, Norway is
effectively under the occupation of anti-Semitic leftists and radical
Muslims, and appears willing to help enable the destruction of the
Jewish state of Israel.
For example, one of Norway's leading intellectuals, Jostein Gaarder,
published an op-ed article in a major Norwegian daily newspaper in
2006 arguing against recognizing the state of Israel in its current
form and claiming that Judaism is "an archaic national and warlike
religion."
Gaarder equated the Jewish state of Israel's attempts to defend itself
against Islamic terrorists with apartheid and ethnic cleansing:
We no longer recognize the State of Israel. We could not recognize the
apartheid regime of South Africa, nor did we recognize the Afghani
Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam
Hussein's Iraq or the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. We need to get used to
the idea: The State of Israel, in its current form, is history.
The State of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall
have no peace until it lays down its arms.
Norway's Labor Party lawmaker Anders Mathisen has gone even further
and publicly denied the Holocaust. He said that Jews "exaggerated
their stories" and "there is no evidence the gas chambers and or mass
graves existed." While the Norwegian political establishment and
opinion-maker elite may not have reached that point of lunacy just
yet, they do tend to treat Muslims as the victims of Israeli
oppression – as if today's Muslims are filling the shoes of the Jewish
victims of the Holocaust and today's Nazis are the Israelis.
Thorbjørn Jagland, former prime minister of Norway, the president of
the Norwegian Parliament, and the head of the Nobel Prize committee
that gave President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, sided with Turkey and
condemned Israel for the defensive actions it took last year against
the so-called Free Gaza flotilla.
Socialist leader Kristin Halvorsen has been leading the boycott Israel
campaign. While serving as Norway's finance minister, she was amongst
the demonstrators at an anti-Israel protest, in which a poster read
(translated): "The greatest axis of evil: USA and Israel." Among the
slogans repeatedly shouted at the demonstration was (as translated)
"Death to the Jews!"
Halvorsen has recently supported a measure calling for military action
against Israel if it decides to act against Hamas in Gaza, based on
the reasoning that the world community's credibility in confronting
the Qaddafi regime would be undermined if it does nothing to help
Hamas repel Israeli air attacks in Gaza.
Last year, the Norwegian government decided to divest from two Israeli
entities working in the West Bank. Norway's sovereign wealth fund
divested from the Israeli company Elbit, because it has worked on the
Israeli security fence that keeps out Palestinian suicide bombers.
Israel has also been blocked from bidding for Norwegian defense
contracts.
The state-owned TV NRK aired the one-sided movie "Tears over Gaza,"
photographed by several Palestinian cameramen during and after
Israel's Operation Cast Lead. Its film director Vibeke Løkkeberg had
the gall to compare Israel's defensive military actions in Gaza, which
protect Israeli civilians from Hamas bombs, to "the massacres Qaddafi
is conducting against Libyan insurgents."
As explained by Bruce Bawer, an American literary critic, writer and
poet who lives in Norway and has criticized European anti-Semitism and
radical Islam, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, contemporary
Norwegian anti-Semitism is alive and well in Norway especially amongst
"the cultural elite – the academics, intellectuals, writers,
journalists, politicians, and technocrats."
It is such anti-Semitic tripe and moral equivalency that embolden the
Muslims living in Norway to legitimize their own anti-Semitic conduct,
which Norwegian officials have been tolerating in the name of
multiculturalism.
As Bawer explained:
Part of the motivation for this anti-Semitism is the influx into
Norway in recent decades of masses of Muslims from Pakistan, Iraq,
Somalia and elsewhere. Multiculturalism has taught Norway's cultural
elite to take an uncritical, even obsequious, posture toward every
aspect of Muslim culture and belief. When Muslim leaders rant against
Israel and the Jews, the reflexive response of the multiculturalist
elite is to join them in their rantings. This is called solidarity.
In 2009, when Muslims rioted violently in downtown Oslo to protest
Israel's actions against Hamas, resulting in extensive damage, there
were few consequences for those responsible.
Teachers at schools with large shares of Muslims reported that Muslim
students often "praise or admire Adolf Hitler for his killing of
Jews," that "Jew-hate is legitimate within vast groups of Muslim
students" and that "Muslims laugh or command [teachers] to stop when
trying to educate about the Holocaust."
Norway is repeating its Quisling treachery of the Nazi era, this time
in league with a growing radical Muslim population. And once again the
Jews are the victims.
Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal
Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical
Islam.
3. http://www.israelbehindthenews.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=1509
Norwegian Labor Party Youth Movement Bashes Israel
By Erez Uriely
The Norwegian Israel Center (NIS) is a voluntary politically
independent documentation and resource center that works at promoting
a more balanced view towards Israel, and therefore fights
antisemitism. At the same time, we try to build a bridge between Jews
and Christians
On 10.07.2002, Mrs. Eva Kristin Hansen, the leader of the Norwegian
Labor Party Youth Movement (AUF), called upon the Attorney General of
Norway to investigate whether "Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
and other Israeli leaders can be put on trial for crimes they
committed" (http://norskisraelsenter.no/engl/auf-sharon-vg-engl.htm).
Kristin explained that this AUF demand for an indictment comes in
light of "...$nbsp;killing of ambulance personnel, occasional
destruction of civil targets and the illegal execution of civilians".
Less than a day after this AUF petition was sent to the court,
Norwegian former Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Labor) spoke before
the AUF and attacked Israel. NIS notes that it was not so long ago -
20.4.2002 -, that Stoltenberg gave a speech attacking Israel, while
Nazi Swastikas and other horrible anti-Jewish banners were held up in
front of the Norwegian parliament
(http://norskisraelsenter.no/engl/ap-stoltenberg-eng.htm). Such
symbols are otherwise forbidden for use in demonstrations organized by
Neo-Nazis.
NIS is aware of the important position that the AUF has in the
political life of Norway, particularly concerning the Norwegian Labor
Party. AUF has produced many important leaders of the Labor Party.
Naturally, their opinions influence their environment and Norway.
As young AUF members, future central Norwegian Labor Party leaders,
called in 1971 for the destruction of Israel: "The qualification for
lasting peace must be that Israel cease to exist as a Jewish state".
(As quoted by Haakon Lie, former Secretary General of the Norwegian
Labor Party, in his book: Slik Jeg Ser Det - As I See It - part II, p.
132.)
This destruction is what the Labor Party calls "peace". Former Foreign
Minister Bjorn Tore Godal was the leader of the same AUF that
formulated this declaration, which shows obvious religious antagonism
towards Judaism. Can we trust that Godal was neutral and clean of
prejudice while he handled Israel under the Oslo Process?
Since the 1970's, Norwegian Labor leaders have supported the PLO. The
PLO, we remind you, is committed to destroy Israel, a point that did
not prevent Norway from awarding it's leader no less than the Nobel
Peace Prize. Torbjoern Jagland, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jens
Stoltenberg and Terje Roed-Larsen have followed the line that supports
PLO. NIS finds it difficult to understand how such leaders can
contribute to a more peaceful Middle East.
NIS notes that racism is defined as negative discrimination of an
ethnic group. Racism against Jews is defined as Jew-hatred, or
antisemitism.
NIS is aware that the leadership of the Norwegian Labor Party Youth
Movement does not necessarily represent the majority opinion. We
therefore warn against labeling the whole Norwegian Labor Party, and
all of its daughter organizations, as antisemitic.
NIS is, however, very concerned by the fact that the leadership of the
Norwegian Labor Party and its daughter organizations might stimulate
and encourage Jew-hatred, which is already well developed in Norway.
In 2002, Jews are being harassed, Jewish children are being
discriminated against in schools and some of the Jews "feel the earth
burning under their feet".
Therefore, it is not surprising that Jews try to maintain a low
profile and, especially, deny any connection to the Jewish state, the
target for modern Jew-hatred. Norway has never been a place in which
Jews could feel equal and permanently safe, particularly before and
during the Holocaust (http://norskisraelsenter.no/index-engl.htm).
This attack by the Labor Party on Israel came only a short time after
1.5.2002, when the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) called
upon Norwegians to boycott products produced in the Jewish state,
Israel. LO is traditionally controlled by the Labor Party. Therefore,
we ask the leader of The Norwegian Labor Party and its Youth Movement
branch: If you really care about human rights,...$nbsp;
What have you done about the Syrian and PLO responsibility for the
massacre of more than 100,000 Christians in Lebanon between 1974 and
1982? Did you try to save them, or punish those responsible?
Why do you blame the prime minister of the Jewish State for acts
committed by Christian phalangists - led by a Syrian agent - as
revenge for a continuous Moslem massacre? Why not blame the Christians
and Moslems involved?
Have you tried to stop the ongoing massacre of Christians in Sudan?
During the past several years, more than 1.5 million Christians have
been massacred there. Where have you been? Where are you now?
What will you do to improve the life of millions of Moslem Arabs,
suffering from tyranny under every single Arab regime, and especially
under the PLO?
Israel, surrounded by Moslem countries to the north, east and south,
and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, is fighting daily for its
survival. The Arab League established the PLO in 1964 as an
umbrella-organization for various Arab groups, with the explicit aim
of wiping out Israel as an independent state. This is clearly
incorporated into the PLO charter and into the "constitution" of
al-Fatah, an organization led by Arafat since 1958. With Israel as an
exception, the Moslem Arabs have managed to eradicate any non-Moslem
minority in the Middle East. But they still refuse to give up. This is
the real background of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
NIS therefore encourages The Norwegian Labor Party Youth Movement to
consider a change in its radical line. Please support democracy in the
Middle East and fight for equality and human right for Jews,
Christians and Moslems in the Arab-occupied Middle East.
4. The take on Norway by an anti-Semitic blogger:
http://kapodickie.blogspot.com/2011/07/silverstein-blames-jews-for-norway.html
Saturday, July 23, 2011
The Norwegian Activist, and the Tentsters for Socialism
"terrorism." Not a single Norwegian government spokesman or newspaper
referred to the killer as an activist or a militant. This is the same
Norwegian government that has been lobbying for a Palestinian state
and condemns Israel whenever it uses force against terrorists.
CNN was suddenly using the "T" word. NY Times commentators were not
referring to the killer as a peace activist, whose grievances and
sense of justice forced him to turn to violence. European politicians
were not insisting that the shootings of the kids on the island were
protests against occupation. Israeli leftists were not insisting that
all the demands of the shooter be met in full. Shimon Peres was not
insisting that the shooter be given his own state before the really
violent Norwegian extremists nudge him aside. After all, there are no
military solutions to the problems of shootings of Norwegians.
The great irony is that the Norwegian attacks do not appear really to
be terrorism. They appear to be the acts of a mentally deranged
person, something like the Jonestown massacre. Certainly not
organized terrorism like the atrocities perpetrated by the
"Palestinians" so beloved by the Scandinavians. (Timothy McVeigh may
also be more correctly regarded as a madman than a terrorist.)
2. As you know, Israel recently passed a law allowing victims of
economic boycotts to sue the organizers of those boycotts in court for
damages. The Israeli Left is hysterical. The unelected
anti-democratic justices in the Israeli Supreme Court may soon try to
veto the law. The Israeli leftist media are denouncing the law in
totalitarian unison. Foreign Israel-bashers are denouncing the law as
creeping "fascism" in Israel.
All of which makes the following story even more delicious. It turns
out that a bill was submitted to the Knesset in 2006 that would
prohibit boycotts in Israel. The sponsor of that bill stated at the
time: "In the reality of modern life a boycott is an anachronism whose
only purpose is to advance narrow special interests, and to extort
public figures and coerce them into altering their decisions, and
whose aim is to harm public figures and private persons."
The sponsor of the bill in question and the proclaimer of that quote
was none other than Knesset Member Ophir Pines (pronounced "offer
penis"), one of the leaders of the Labor Party and a contender for
party leader and Prime Minister. He submitted the bill because at the
time some rabbis were talking about possibly boycotting some stores.
Ophir Pines-Paz, as he has recently been calling himself, thought it
was the height of democracy to prohibit boycotts.
Except that these days he and his party are leading the jihad AGAINST
the new Israeli law, which does exactly that. NOW these same people
insist that an anti-boycott law is anti-democratic and fascist. So
does the New Israel Fund, with which Pines has intimate ties. The New
Israel Fund of course has also been funding the leftwing NGOs
attempting to block the anti-boycott law and all other bills designed
to rein in Israel's foreign-funded subversive leftist NGOs.
3. Summers are often the silly season in Israel, and this summer the
silliest of all are the hordes of bored young Israelis, including
students waiting for the next semester and "youth movement" teenagers,
moving into tents in central Tel Aviv and in some other places,
ostensibly to "protest" the high prices of housing in Israel. It is
pretty obvious that the "tent cities" were inspired by the recent
boisterous "consumer boycott" against cottage cheese, launched after
the dairy cartel in Israel drove cheese prices sky high. The
"success" of the consumer boycott inspired the bored tent dwellers to
try to drive housing prices down with a similar loud media campaign
and with publicity stunts.
The problem is that the dairy cartel and the three producers of
cottage cheese know they are dependent on the government's
preservation of the anti-competitive structure in the dairy industry
in Israel, and so respond to public pressure and governmental threats
by cutting prices. But rental housing is a competitive market in
which 300,000 landlords lease out property. And competitive markets
could not care less about loud bored teenagers in tents or about
governmental threats to "investigate" and reform the market. The
government can scare the bejeebers out of the dairy cartel by
threatening to import cheese. No landlords can be scared with threats
to import apartment buildings.
Beyond that, the tent protests are just the latest illustration of the
gross idiocy that takes place whenever populists and demagogues in
Israel decide to get "socially aware and concerned." When public
figures in Israel start demanding action in the name of "social
justice," it is time to grab your wallet and race for the hills. The
tent protesters have already been co-opted by the Far Left, and the
New Israel Fund has been exposed as bankrolling the "protesters."
Non-leftists who had joined the tentsters in their first days, like
the Im Tirtzu students, have abandoned the "protests" after the role
of the Far Left there became clear.
Essentially the tent protesters are teenagers and older people whose
ideas never matured beyond those of teenagers, who continue to
fantasize about Israel becoming a utopia operating with 19th century
socialist "ideas." The more immediate demand of the "protesters" is
that they want rent controls. Yes, the same sorts of rent controls
that destroyed the housing stock of New York City and of all other
cities in which they have been implemented. (See
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4099043,00.html)
The protesters are quite candid about what they want. It seems they
cannot afford the rents in the most popular sections of Northern Tel
Aviv. And they insist that it is their "right" to live in those areas
at rents that they deem "affordable." This is a bit like college
students in America insisting that all apartments along Park Avenue in
Manhattan be rented to them at rents of $400 per month because this is
what they can afford. The fact that apartments on Park Avenue are
more likely to rent out at $10,000 per month is just proof of how
unjust society is and how important it is for the government to
control prices.
Now some reporters ask the protesters what is wrong with moving to the
more distant suburbs of Tel Aviv, where rents are much lower. Nothing
doing, respond the crusaders for social justice, all the cool pubs are
in Northern Tel Aviv. Really cynical reporters sometimes ask what is
wrong with moving to Ashkelon or Ashdod, where rents are REALLY low.
But we do not WANT to live so far away, respond the crusaders for
justice. We demand the right to live on Israel's version of Fifth
Avenue and cross streets in the 60s. Besides there is nothing worth
doing pub-wise in Ashdod.
Of course young crusaders who want to live CLOSER to the action can
live in very-cheap Lod and commute into pub-land in Northern Tel Aviv
in 10 minutes by train. But no, train commuting is beneath their
dignity.
Oh, and about those impoverished young people living in the tents.
The tents were provided by the New Israel Fund. But the shiny brand
new cars in which they arrived at the tent cities were provided by
mommy and daddy. SO if mommy and daddy can buy junior cars, why can't
they also chip in for his rent and his tuition? I marvel weekly at
all the shiny new student cars jamming up my own campus when I arrive
at the same campus by bus.
Now the biggest problem of all for the junior crusaders for social
justice and their cheerleading squads in the Israeli media is their
refusal to take courses in basic economics. Those bellowing that
Israeli housing prices are "so high that no Israelis can afford them"
are missing the point that the housing prices are high precisely
BECAUSE so many Israelis can afford them, and THOSE Israelis are the
ones bidding the prices up! Part of the price surge is a reflection
of Bank of Israel policy that has been holding down interest rates as
macroeconomic policy during the recent world financial crisis. Every
Israeli can borrow oodles of shekels at really low interest rates and
bid for the housing. That policy was foolish, although nothing close
to the stupidity of the policy of Obama to spend a year's GDP worth of
wampum bailing out institutions and buying up toxic assets, so I guess
we should not be complaining too much.
If the demagogues in the Knesset decide to pander to the crusaders for
justice, they just might introduce rent controls, which will really
produce mass pauperization of Israelis and destruction of the housing
stock. Students now complaining about $1500 per month rents in Tel
Aviv will really have something to bitch about when those rents become
infinity.
Friday, July 22, 2011
The BDS-holes
exposes and mocks those particpating in the BDS (boycott, divest,
sanctions) movement of economic aggression against Israel and Jews:
Welcome to PACBI.com, the leading web site in the growing BDS movement!!
Here we tell you everything you need to know about anti-Zionism and
BDS! Just what is BDS?
BDS stands for Bigots, Dingbats and Scoundrels. BDS-ers come from the
goosestepping Neo-Nazi Right, from the bedwetting radical Left, from
the "anarchist" anarcho-fascist movements, from the various front
groups for the "International Solidarity Movement" or ISM (which
stands for "I Support Murderers").
BDS is the official mantra of the anti-Semitic vermin and their
genocidal fellow travelers, who are attempting to get the world to
boycott Israel. The BDS scum consist of anti-Jewish racists seeking
the annihilation of Israel and strive for a second Holocaust of the
Jewish people. They work to achieve this while pretending that they
think Israel mistreats Arabs. If they had been alive in the 1930s and
1940s, they would all have been participating in the German movement
to boycott and divest from Jews!
That is right. These morons and would-be pogromchiks seriously want
you to think that Arabs in Israel are "oppressed" by the Jews. Sure,
they are about as oppressed by the Jews as the Germans in the 1930s
were oppressed by the Jews.
Never mind that Arabs living under Israeli rule are treated a thousand
times better than Arabs living under any Arab regime. Never mind that
Arabs living under Israeli "occupation" enjoy infinitely more freedoms
than any Arabs living anywhere else in the Middle East. Never mind
that Israeli Arabs enjoy far more minority rights than do most
minority groups in Europe.
The BDS neo-fascists and barnyard bigots claim Israel is an apartheid
regime. They of course know perfectly well that Israel is the only
country in the Middle East that is NOT an apartheid regime.
Curiously, the BDS scum could not care less about Arabs being killed
when the killers are other Arabs. Hundreds of thousands butchered in
Algeria, genocide in Sudan, uses of chemical weapons against civilians
in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey – none of this interests them. Palestinians
murdered by Jordan do not interest them. Human rights of Arabs do not
really interest them – after all, the only place in the Middle East
where Arabs enjoy freedoms and where the human rights of Arabs are
respected is in Israel!
The BDS lickspittles want to see Israel boycotted because the BDS-ers
are primitive bigots. They hate Jews. Their "caring" about Arabs is a
pretense that they utilize to attack Jews. Hating Jews helps them feel
righteous about themselves. It makes up for their inability to cope
with the real world and succeed in life. It is their way to make
people overlook the stupidity and inferiority of the BDS anti-Semites
themselves.
The Israeli Supreme Court in the Service of the Kidnapper of Ron Arad
judicial atrocity in the Neve Gordon SLAPP suit against me, and in the
refusal of the Israeli judicial system to defend freedom of speech.
I am tempted to say that this was the worst and most outrageous
judicial atrocity in Israeli history. But I am afraid it was not.
The decision this week by the Israeli Supreme Court (or what some are
suggesting should be called the Israeli Supreme Cult) in the matter of
Mustafa Dirani (sometimes spelled Durani) beats it cold.
Allow us to introduce you to the latest client of the Israeli
Supreme Court.
Mustafa Dirani is believed to be the terrorist who captured
Israeli navigator Ron Arad when he was forced to parachute into
Lebanon. Dirani's terrorists ignored Red Cross requests and
international Geneva Convention rules and held Arad incommunicado for
years. No one quite knows what they did with Arad, but it is
generally believed that Dirani "sold" Arad to the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards and that Arad was probably eventually murdered by
them. Dirani was paid $300,000 for "selling" Arad to the Iranians.
The terrorists did not even have the decency to reveal Arad's fate,
leaving his wife an "aguna."
Dirani was the "head of security" in the Amal militia of Shi'ites
operating in Lebanon, and then split off to form his own Shi'ite
terrorist militia, named "Believing Resistance," this before the
Hezb'Allah became the head of the Shi'ite terrorist syndicate.
In a counter-terrorism ground operation in Lebanon in 1994, Dirani
was abducted by Israel and tossed into prison, to be held as a
bargaining chip to obtain the release of Ron Arad or of other Israeli
POW's.
While Dirani should have been executed by Israel for his crimes,
he was kept in cushy comfort in Israeli prison. I do not know if he
was permitted to takes courses in distance learning for a BA, like
other Lebanese terrorist murderers held in Israel. His being kept
alive of course was an open invitation for other terrorists to kidnap
and murder Israelis, to gain Dirani's release. And the Israeli Far
Left insisted all along that he should just be released with no quid
pro quo because releasing terrorist murderers is the best way to
achieve peace.
In 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to release more than
400 terrorists in order to "purchase" back from the Hezb'Allah the
corpses of three Israeli POW's who had been murdered in cold blood by
the terrorists. In addition, the Hezb'Allah released the Israeli drug
smuggler Elhanan Tannenbaum, who had entered Lebanon illegally to buy
drugs when he was kidnapped by the terrorists. Tannenbaum had been a
senior army officer in Israel and it is widely believed that his army
buddies pulled strings to get the deal to release him approved. One
of the terrorists released by Sharon to "buy back" the corpses and the
live drug criminal was Dirani. At the time I published an article
about the "deal" entitled "I am Ashamed to be an Israeli," which you
can read here:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/3274 I also
suggested that I would be willing to release to the Hezb'Allah a few
terrorists as payment for them keeping Elhanan Tannebaum THERE in
Lebanon.
Since being released, Dirani has become something of a terrorist
celebrity in the Kasbah. Sharon did not even demand information about
Arad's fate or murder before releasing Dirani in the "deal." Dirani
is now serving as a senior Hezb'Allah terrorist.
Because Dirani no doubt sang like a canary while being interrogated
by Israel, he later invented a tall tale about being "raped" and
"tortured" while in Israeli prison by a guard or intelligence officer
he claims is named "George." I have always assumed that he chose the
name George while reading those books about the little monkey who
lives with the man with the big yellow hat.
Well, Mustafa Dirani continues to try to profit from his
"victimhood" at the hands of "George." From his terrorist abode in
Lebanon, Dirani attempted to file a damages suit against Israel for
the fictional tryst he claims Curious George engaged with him while in
prison. The "evidence" that Dirani was sexually abused by "George" is
that Dirani says so. The Israeli Tel Aviv district court, where this
was filed, tossed the suit out, into the garbage.
AH, but then in steps the Israeli Supreme Cult. By a vote of two
against one, a Supreme Court panel has just overridden the Tel Aviv
Court and has ordered that Dirani be allowed to sue the state of
Israel in Israeli court for "damages" and "compensation"! This
decision was written by retiring Supreme Court justice Ayala
Procaccia, the same judge who tossed 14 year old religions girls into
prison without a trial because they had participated in a Right-wing
protest demonstration. Procaccia, who makes no attempt to hide her
radical leftist agenda, also wrote the recent Supreme Court decision
that ruled that telling the truth is no defense at all against being
charged under Israel's Soviet-style law for "insulting a public
servant." She was joined in this Dirani ruling by the Arab Supreme
Court judge Salim Jubran, who was one of the judges who refused to
defend freedom of speech in the recent ruling in the matter of the
Gordon SLAPP suit.
(See this: http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=229933
and http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4097066,00.html )
SO the terrorist and international criminal Dirani is now to be
rewarded for his kidnapping and probable murder of Ron Arad by being
invited by the Israeli Supreme Court to sue the government of Israel
in an Israeli court from his Hezb'Allah terrorist hideaway for his
fictional "victimhood" by the Israeli prison authority. If he wins,
he will get lots of shekels in "damages."
The duo of Procaccia and Jubran also issued another ruling a few
days ago ordering the Beer Sheba municipality to take an old
long-abandoned building that had once served as a mosque before 1948
and to renovate it at municipality expense and convert it into a
museum of Islamic culture. Just which law gave the Supreme Court
judges the right to order this? No law at all, grasshopper, just
"judicial activism."
Thursday, July 21, 2011
An Earlier Article on the "Israeli David Irving Suit" (2003)
Opinion
The David Irving Trial in Israel
The Israeli 'David Irving' is himself an Israeli and a Jew. Moreover,
while David Irving was never on the faculty of a bona fide academic
institution, the plaintiff in the Israeli David Irving Trial is. He is
Dr. Neve Gordon, from the Department of Political Science at
Ben-Gurion University.
From Richard Lakisher
In the now world-famous libel suit between Holocaust Denier David
Irving and Dr. Deoborah Lipstadt, Irving sued Lipstadt and her
publisher. Lipstadt had written that Irving was a Nazi apologist and
admirer of Hitler. She had asserted that Irving was a Holocaust Denier
who had distorted facts and manipulated documents to prove that there
had been no genocide of Jews during World War II. Irving sued for
libel. He claimed that Lipstadt damaged his reputation and credentials
as a serious historian and writer. Lipstadt's claims against Irving
were in part based on Irving's own efforts as apologist for and
promoter of the writings and views of the neo-Nazi and Holocaust
Denier Ernst Zundel, who was on trial at the time in Canada.
Dr. Lipstadt's defense was that her depiction of Irving as a Nazi and
Holocaust Denier was entirely true and backed up by numerous writings
by Irving himself. She presented evidence in court that Irving is a
racist, an extremist anti-Semite himself, and associated with
anti-Semitic right-wing extremists.
The judgment in the case was handed down in April, 2000. The court
found for the defendants (meaning Lipstadt). The British court found
that her assertions were simply statements of fact. The judge
confirmed that Irving had served as an apologist for neo-Nazis and
anti-Semites, and rejected his denials that he is an extremist, racist
and anti-Semite. (It continues to be a fact that he regularly appears
before and writes for anti-Semitic audiences.) The court ordered
Irving to pay 150,000 pounds sterling in damages for his baseless suit
against Lipstadt. The judgment and the legal costs are estimated by
The Guardian to have cost Irving between one and two million pounds
and to have forced him into bankruptcy.
The British court said effectively that it is not libelous to tell the
truth about a fanatic extremist. It is not libelous to denounce him in
strong terms. Extremists may not use the court as a club to stifle
denunciations of their behavior and writings by those who are
vehemently critical of their views.
It is one of the bizarre twists of the political scene in Israel that
a David Irving Trial of sorts is taking place there at the moment. It
is a trial that bears many similarities to the actual David Irving
Trial in Britain.
To begin with, it involves a political extremist suing for libel, and
a courageous critic who labeled him an anti-Semite and fanatic because
of his writings and political behavior. The Israeli plaintiff is
himself a writer who has often been cited and featured with honor on
the personal web site of the British David Irving. His writings have
been published on neo-Nazi and Holocaust Denier web sites, as well as
in other anti-Semitic and Islamist fundamentalist journals and web
sites.
The defendant argues that the plaintiff is attempting to use the court
as a club to suppress free speech in an anti-democratic manner. The
plaintiff has filed a frivolous nuisance suit to bully his critics, so
that they will be afraid to denounce the plaintiff's political views
and behavior.
There are other significant similarities between the two trials. In
both, the plaintiff has a record of praising and promoting the views
of people commonly seen as Holocaust Deniers. In both instances, the
plaintiff associates with extremist anti-Semitic organizations and
with individuals widely considered to be anti-Semites, and
collaborates with them in publishing their views. Both plaintiffs are
venomously critical of Israel and its leaders and have expressed
"understanding" for anti-Israel terrorism. In both cases, the
extremist plaintiff claims that his good name as a researcher was
damaged by those who attack his behavior and denounce his writings and
opinions. In both cases, no attempt was made to prove that actual
material damages were suffered by the plaintiff.
In short, both plaintiffs in the two David Irving Trials used the
framework of a libel suit to try to force their critics into silence.
There is one important difference though. The Israeli 'David Irving'
is himself an Israeli and a Jew. Moreover, while David Irving was
never on the faculty of a bona fide academic institution, the
plaintiff in the Israeli David Irving Trial is. He is Dr. Neve Gordon,
from the Department of Political Science at Ben-Gurion University.
The defendant in Gordon's libel suit is the professor, columnist and
writer, Professor Steven Plaut. He is on the faculty of the University
of Haifa.
Neve Gordon is a member of a department that is nearly wall-to-wall
leftist. He holds a Ph.D. from Notre Dame University, a Catholic
school in Indiana. Most of the articles he has published are
politicized and/or devoted to attacking Israeli policies and/or
denounce Israel as a terrorist country. The Middle East Quarterly has
declared him to be one of Israel's academic extremists.
Gordon goes beyond the chic support for the PLO and its positions so
common today among Israeli academic leftists. Gordon has allied
himself and collaborated with a wide variety of anti-Semites and
anti-Semitic organizations. He used to lead the Physicians for Human
Rights in Israel (despite not being an MD himself), a pro-Arab
organization so extreme that it has been publicly denounced by the
Israel Medical Association. It was condemned as an openly anti-Semitic
organization by Professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University,
who, together with 200 other people, signed a petition to that effect.
Gordon also maintains a long-term ongoing collaboration with Alexander
Cockburn, the anti-Israel Far Leftist American columnist and publisher
of Counterpunch magazine. Cockburn has been repeatedly denounced as an
anti-Semite by the New Republic and by a variety of other journals,
organizations and columnists, including the Seattle Times, the
Declaration Foundation, Professor Edward Alexander, LewRockwell.com,
LeftWatch, and Christian Action for Israel. Cockburn has openly given
credence to reports that Jews spread anthrax in the US and that Israel
was part of a conspiracy to topple the World Trade Center. Cockburn
insists Jews conspire to control the media. Gordon has published a
large number of articles attacking Israel in Counterpunch.
Gordon is active in a Far-Left Israeli organization with the Arabic
name Taayush, which, in Gordon's own words (cited in an interview), is
a seditious organization that "opposes Arab-Jewish coexistence."
But Gordon's screeds appeal to an audience that goes beyond the mere
vocal critics of Israel. Gordon's articles have been published and
cited on a wide variety of neo-Nazi, Holocaust Denial and Islamist
fundamentalist newspapers and web sites. On several neo-Nazi web
sites, a work by Gordon is cited right after a citation from Hitler
himself, making for curious footnote bedfellows.
Gordon has published articles attacking Israel in the Egyptian
anti-Semitic daily Al-Ahram, which routinely spreads anti-Jewish blood
libels. Gordon's articles have been published by al-Jazeera, the same
Arab news agency that airs the speeches of Bin Laden and that
broadcasted the shots of the Allied troops being murdered by Saddam's
Republican Guards during the recent Iraq war.
The Holocaust-denying Radio Islam internet web site carries the
writings of Gordon alongside its reprinting of The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion. Radio Islam also indulges in traditional medieval
anti-Jewish blood libels, and Der Sturmer-like cartoons showing Jews
drinking blood. Gordon's articles have been published on the
Electronic Intifada, a pro-terror web site, and on the web site of the
anti-Jewish, Islamist, pro-Hamas CAIR organization in the US.
While Gordon claims that he himself did not place his articles on some
of these more anti-Semitic web sites, the fact that the articles
appealed to the operators of those sites sufficiently for them to
carry them speaks volumes about their contents.
In his writings, Gordon repeatedly insists Israel is a fascist state
and a terrorist state, engaging in state terrorism that is no
different morally from the mass atrocities of Palestinian and other
terrorists. He has denounced Israeli fascism not only in English, but
also on web sites in German and Italian. Not only has he denounced
Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu as war criminals, he has attacked
leftist Labor Party ultra-Oslo-dove Ehud Barak. Gordon has written
that Bibi Netanyahu is the continuation of Yigal Amir, the murderer of
Yitzhak Rabin, and is a spy, criminal or terrorist. He insists Sharon
delights in the deaths of Arabs and Jews. He was one of the signers of
the petitions before the recent Iraq war declaring that Israel was
planning to perpetrate atrocities and massive crimes against humanity
once the war broke out. Ben-Dror Yemini, a columnist at Maariv, has
denounced all such signatories as being the Israeli equivalents of
Lord Haw-Haw, the British traitor and lackey of Hitler during World
War II.
Gordon repeatedly endorses insubordination and mutiny by Israelis
refusing to serve in the military and is active in political groups
supporting the mutineers. He has compared Israel to apartheid South
Africa and has called the Zionist Organization of America in the
United States racist. Gordon has repeatedly endorsed general boycotts
against Israel and his articles are carried by pro-boycott web sites,
magazines and organizations. He has expressed sympathy for the
bi-national state solution, in which Israel would cease to exist as a
Jewish state. He has expressed understanding for terrorism because it
is caused by injustice. He has repeatedly insisted that Israel - and
specifically Prime Minister Ehud Barak - only understands violence,
implying that Arabs should engage in more of it. He considers Israel
the main culprit responsible for Middle East violence, and insists
this was so even when Barak was prime minister.
Gordon's politics are so extremist that one of the professors at Notre
Dame, where Gordon got his Ph.D. has denounced him venomously in
writing and wished him to be blown up by terrorists in an Israeli
mall.
Gordon has been active among those Israeli and international Leftists
seeking to interfere with Israeli military operations against
Palestinian terrorists in the territories. He has worked with Taayush
and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in trying to prevent
Israeli actions against terrorism there, and - according to his own
admission - he was arrested for this at least once.
After the Netanya Passover Massacre of 2002, Israel launched Operation
Defensive Wall against the terrorists. During that operation, Gordon
was one of the group of Far Leftists who illegally infiltrated Israeli
army lines and entered Arafat's besieged headquarters in Ramallah to
prevent Israel from arresting the wanted terrorists holed up there,
and trying to block IDF attempts to attack Arafat's offices. On
February 2, 2002, Israel's Haaretz daily carried a large photo of
Gordon in a warm embrace with Arafat in his besieged Ramallah
headquarters, clasping hands together in a heart-warming show of
solidarity. These hands of Arafat being clasped with affection by
Gordon were the very same that signed the orders for the murders of
hundreds of Israelis. No photo of Gordon showing solidarity with the
victims of Arafat's terror was ever printed in the paper.
The most dramatic manifestation of Gordon's political extremism is his
promotion and praise of the scribblings of Norman Finkelstein.
Finkelstein is by now fairly well know for his book The Holocaust
Industry, and other writings, in which he trivializes and mocks the
Holocaust and claims that virtually all Holocaust survivors are liars,
thieves and cheats. Finkelstein has been denounced as a Holocaust
Denier, neo-Nazi, Holocaust trivializer, anti-Semite, fraud,
pseudo-researcher, and worse by nearly every reviewer in every
legitimate medium that has discussed him and his book. He was fired
from jobs at two New York area academic institutions and now is
employed by a Catholic college in Chicago. The New York Times has
compared Finkelstein's book to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The British Guardian claims Finkelstein is an anti-Semite and a
Holocaust Denier. The Washington Post declares Finkelstein an
anti-Semite with ties to Nazis. Moment magazine, the ADL, the World
Jewish Congress, Elie Wiesel, Professor Edward Alexander, Alan
Dershowitz, the Canadian Jewish News, the web site on anti-Semitism at
the University of Tel Aviv, Dennis Prager, the Jerusalem Report, Jonah
Daniel Goldhagen and many others have denounced Finkelstein as a Nazi,
Holocaust Denier, fraud, and/or anti-Semite.
Finkelstein is also on record endorsing Arab terror and the
destruction of Israel. Finkelstein has become the featured hero of
virtually every Holocaust Denial and neo-Nazi web site on earth. He is
the Nazi's pet Jewish historian, whose research proves there was never
any Holocaust of Jews by the Germans at all. The neo-Nazis insist his
writings prove that talk about a Holocaust is all a Zionist hoax. As
it turns out, Neve Gordon from Ben-Gurion University has published
articles in the leftist magazine The Nation, in Israel's Haaretz, and
on several web sites that not only sing Finkelstein's praises and
endorse many of the themes in Finkelstein's books, but has actually
compared Finkelstein favorably to the Prophets of the Bible.
Finkelstein himself is so proud of Gordon's praise that he features
one of Gordon's articles on his own personal web site. Gordon may in
fact be the only academic at a bona fide university in the world who
acknowledges Finkelstein as a serious researcher.
All of which brings us to Gordon's libel suit against Professor Plaut.
On various occasions, Plaut has criticized Gordon's political opinions
and political behavior on the internet. Gordon regards such criticism
of himself as libel. In rather typical leftist manner, Gordon seems to
believe that the most extremist, fanatic and outrageous behavior and
opinions of leftists must be protected as free speech, but criticism
by non-leftists must be suppressed, using the courts and lawyers as an
anti-democratic billy club. Leftists in many countries use the filing
of frivolous nuisance libel suits as a guerilla tactic to suppress the
free speech of their critics.
Gordon's libel suit against Professor Plaut is based mainly on two
short sets of comments that Plaut wrote on the internet about Gordon
and his friends. In one, Plaut described Gordon as a groupie of
Holocaust Denier Norman Finkelstein. In Gordon's suit, he
intentionally mistranslates this into Hebrew as if Plaut were saying
that Gordon is ?walking in the furrow? of Holocaust Deniers. The fact
that Gordon describes Norman Finkelstein as the moral equivalent of
Biblical Prophets would seem to make his describing Gordon as a
groupie of Finkelstein factually unchallengeable.
The other comment of Professor Plaut's that upset Gordon was in an
internet posting reporting the actions of the human shields entering
Arafat's headquarters to defend wanted Palestinian terrorists during
Operation Defensive Shield. Plaut reported that Gordon himself had
entered the headquarters with these people and was thus to be found
among the Judenrat wanna-bes. Describing people who appoint themselves
as representatives and liaisons to mass murderers of Jews might
legitimately be described as Judenrat wanna-bes. But Gordon and his
Arab lawyer from East Jerusalem insist it is libelous.
Plaut also described Gordon as a fanatic anti-Semite because of his
endorsements of Finkelstein's ideas and writings. In any case, if
proof were needed that this is so, a very large host of anti-Jewish,
neo-Nazi and Holocaust-Denial web sites and newspapers regard Gordon
as sufficiently anti-Semitic to publish his writings.
In short, Gordon has decided that Plaut will play the role of Deborah
Lipstadt in Israel's analogue to the David Irving Trial. Everything
Plaut has written about Gordon is simply an assessment of Gordon's own
political writings and behavior. Gordon is a public figure - an Op-Ed
columnist, a representative of several radical political
organizations, a very public hand-holder of Yasser Arafat - and
criticism of his political opinions and political actions is a
legitimate expression of free speech. Plaut's criticisms and
denunciations of Gordon's behavior and writings were evoked by
Gordon's own political behavior, exactly as were Deborah Lipstadt's
denunciations of David Irving. Actually, Plaut has never met Gordon
and knew nothing about him before the suit, other than from his
political writings and actions.
Free speech in Israel is under assault and the defeat of frivolous
libel suits is a crucial part of its protection.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The Threat to Israeli Liberties from the Israeli Supreme Court
The Threat to Israeli Liberties from the Israeli Supreme Court
By Steven Plaut
Robert Bork, the eminent American law professor from Yale University,
once described the Israeli Supreme Court as the worst in the Western
world. Israel, Bork wrote, "has set a standard for judicial
imperialism that can probably never be surpassed, and, one devoutly
hopes, will never be equaled elsewhere." Bork finds "less and less
reason for the Israeli people to bother electing a legislature and
executive; the attorney general, with the backing of the Supreme
Court, can decide almost everything for them." To make things worse,
judges in Israel, including Supreme Court judges, are chosen by a
non-elected panel dominated by other judges, and there are no
possibilities for impeachment of judges by the parliament or by ballot
initiative. Appointments of judges are not subject to approval by the
Israeli parliament (the Knesset).
Israel's Supreme Court has been dominated by the anti-democratic
doctrine of "judicial activism" for a generation. "Judicial activism"
is when judges simply make up imaginary "laws" as they go along,
without the need for the legislature to bother passing them as laws.
This week the Israeli Supreme Court in Israel is denouncing benefits
for Israeli army veterans. What law allows them to do so? None at
all.
In many cases the rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court are attempts to
implement the leftist ideologies of judges. Ex-chief Justice Aharon
Barak used to brag about his issuing rulings based upon "enlightened
opinion" in Israel, meaning leftist opinion. The current chief
justice is also a great believer in "judicial activism." The
unelected justices of the Supreme Court claim the right, invented by
them out of thin air, to be able to overturn laws passed by the
elected representatives of the people. There is no constitutional
basis in Israel for their claiming such a right.
The Israeli Supreme Court has also frequently long displayed
indifference when it comes to civil liberties. It is militantly
aggressive in defending the "liberties" of Israeli Arabs and far
leftists, but seems to have little interest in defending civil
liberties, including freedom of speech, for others. In one extreme
example, a Supreme Court justice, Ayala Procaccia, ordered the
imprisonment without trial of 14-year-old religious girls who had
dared to participate in a demonstration of the right. No one believes
the girls would have been imprisoned had they participated in a
demonstration of the left. Writing in Azure, Robert Bork says,
"Israel's High Court, however, has decided that state inaction amounts
to state action, so that the individual's freedom may be declared
unconstitutional and the state required to act. Individual freedom
thus exists at the sufferance of judges. ... All of this is
exacerbated, as Polisar observes, by a method of selecting judges that
allows the High Court to choose its own membership."
Israel's Supreme Court recently refused to review the decision of the
Nazareth Appeals court in the famous long-running Plaut-Gordon
lawsuit, in effect leaving the earlier anti-democratic decision by the
Nazareth court in place. That lawsuit was a SLAPP harassment suit
filed by the Israeli leftist anti-Semite Neve Gordon against me to try
to stop my criticizing his political opinions and activities. "SLAPP"
stands for "Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation," and SLAPP
suits are anti-democratic harassment tactics used to suppress freedom
of speech.
The Israeli Supreme Court has now refused to defend freedom of speech
and refused to squash SLAPP suit harassment in Israel. It took the
Supreme Court nearly two years to decide not to review an earlier
appeals court decision in the Gordon-Plaut case. Its refusal in
essence establishes formal infringements on freedom of expression in
Israel. The Supreme Court opinion was written by the Deputy Chief
Justice, Eliezer Rivlin. He was joined in his refusal to defend
freedom of speech by justices Neil Handel, supposedly the voice of
religious conservatives on the court, and Salim Jubran, the Arab judge
in the Supreme Court. A few days ago Rivlin was one of the judges who
voted for a different Court ruling that telling the truth is no
defense against the Soviet-style charge of "insulting a public
official" in Israel.
This was one more nail in the coffin for Israeli freedom of speech.
The Gordon SLAPP suit filed against me, which began a decade ago,
should have been summarily dismissed in the very first round of
litigation. Gordon sued me because I accused him of being a "groupie"
of anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein, after Gordon compared Finkelstein
ethically to the Prophets of the Bible, and after I denounced Gordon
for his serving as a human shield for wanted terrorist murderers and
his illegal interference with Israeli anti-terror operations. The
facts of his doing so were never denied by Gordon.
That suit would have been if Israel were really a democratic country
with a functioning judiciary. Instead, it was assigned to a radical
Nazareth court Arab woman judge, whose husband was the right-hand
party man of Azmi Bishara, the Israeli-Arab traitor and spy now in
hiding. Nazareth court has many Arab judges, some of them radical
politically. Neither Gordon nor I live in the Nazareth district, and
the suit was filed in Nazareth as an act of naked forum-shopping,
because Gordon wanted to get a radical Arab judge. In her verdict
this judge endorsed Holocaust revisionism and declared all of Israel a
state constructed on lands stolen from another people. Not
surprisingly she found for Gordon and awarded him 95,000 NIS in
"damages," even the law does not let her award more than 50,000 NIS in
such cases. In essence her verdict amounted to the ruling that
treason in Israel is protected speech but criticism of treason is
libel. She is still sitting on the bench.
This is the same Neve Gordon who routinely calls for Israel to be
destroyed, who insists that Israel is a fascist, Nazi-like apartheid
regime, and whose own university president regards him as a traitor.
Gordon is very likely to be among the very first people to be sued
under Israel's new "anti-boycott" law, which allows the filing of
damage suits against those who have worked for world boycotts against
Israel.
That Nazareth lower court ruling in the case was later reversed on
appeal in the Nazareth Appeals Court, but only 90% of it was reversed,
allowing (by a vote of two judges against one) Gordon to retain 10% of
the "damages" the Arab woman judge had granted him (or 10,000
shekels). Those 10% were based entirely on my use of the term
"Judenrat-wannabe" in an internet article referring to Gordon's
illegal pro-terrorism activities.
The Nazareth Appeals Court ruling was based on an older Supreme Court
case, Dankner vs. Ben Gvir, in which Amnon Dankner, a national
journalist, called the Kahanist Ben Gvir a "little Nazi" on national
television. Ben Gvir sued, and when it reached the Supreme Court the
ruling was that "Holocaust era rhetoric" is prohibited in political
discourse in Israel. The Supreme Court found for Ben Gvir and awarded
him one shekel.
The same Supreme Court has now allowed Neve Gordon to retain 10,000
shekels in "damages" because I referred to his group of human shields
for terrorists as "Judenrat wannabes." The Court believes this is
10,000 times worse than calling someone a "little Nazi." Ironically,
the same Deputy Chief Justice Rivlin, who wrote the Supreme Court
ruling in Gordon-Plaut, voted against the ruling in Dankner-Ben Gvir,
and was the minority voice who claimed even that was protected speech.
To put this differently, denouncing on the internet the illegal
treasonous activities of a person is now 10,000 times worse than
calling someone a little Nazi on national television, in Rivlin's new
opinion. Guess what the Court's "price tag" would be if a leftist
called a non-leftist a Nazi or a storm trooper. I leave you to ponder
how much the use of Holocaust-era rhetoric would be valued by the
court if it were a leftist denouncing Israel as a Nazi regime.
After the Nazareth Appeals Court ruling, I filed a Supreme Court
appeal. After dragging its feet, the Supreme Court panel of three,
led by the same Rivlin, decided there was insufficient constitutional
or public interest in reviewing the Nazareth appeals ruling, in effect
allowing it to stand. And, in effect, also preserving the suppression
of freedom of speech contained in that verdict.
The Israeli Supreme Court has once again refused to defend the freedom
of speech that is supposed to exist in Israel. In their ruling, the
judges appeared not even to have read my appeal, and so failed to note
that the description of Gordon as a "Judenrat-wannabe" that was deemed
"libelous" was in fact a reference to Gordon's serving as a human
shield for wanted murderers and to his illegal treasonous interference
with Israeli military operations against terrorists. For all intents
and purposes, the Israeli Supreme Court reestablished Israel's status
as a mere semi-democracy, one in which freedom of speech does not
really exist, at least not for critics of far leftists.
The earlier Nazareth appeals court ruled that Gordon was entitled to
"damages" because I had denounced his public political writings and
behavior. Gordon is clearly a "public figure" by any reading of the
law, and so his political behavior is hardly subject to immunity from
criticism. Because of the presence of the term "Judenrat-wannabe" in
my sentence, the lower appeals court ruled that this is not protected
speech. Of course the hundreds of daily denunciations by Israeli
leftists or Israeli Arabs against Israel or against Israeli
non-leftists as "Nazi" or "fascist" are all protected speech. The
Supreme Court judges have now agreed with the lower court. The
Supreme Court's ruling establishes the principle that everyone in
Israel may use "Holocaust era imagery" in discourse except for critics
of the left.
The Supreme Court even ignored an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court
itself (Freij vs. Kol Hazman) that came out after the Nazareth Appeals
ruling in Gordon-Plaut, which stated that use of Holocaust-era imagery
in discourse actually is permitted in Israel, especially in political
discourse.
The Supreme Court has failed to act against anti-democratic SLAPP suit
harassment designed to suppress freedom of speech in Israel.
The Supreme Court has failed to do anything against forum shopping by
extremists and radicals seeking to use the Nazareth Court, with its
large number of Arab and radical judges. It is hardly a coincidence
that nearly every suit against the state of Israel filed by West Bank
"Palestinians" is filed in Nazareth court.
The Supreme Court failed to act against the misuse of the courts by
radical anti-Israel leftists as bludgeons again the freedom of
expression for critics of those leftists.
In short, the Supreme Court decided to prove once again that in Israel
there operates a dual justice system, one for radical leftists and one
for everyone else.
The Gordon-Plaut case has become known in the media as the Israeli
David Irving case, similar in some ways to the libel SLAPP suit filed
by Holocaust Denier David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt in British
court. The difference is that in Israel the Supreme Court refuses to
defend the freedom of speech of the Israeli Deborah Lipstadt, nor to
penalize the Israeli analogue to David Irving. Had Deborah Lipstadt
been sued by David Irving in an Israeli court, especially in Nazareth
court, Irving may have won.
The opposition to democracy and freedom of speech in the Israeli law
community transcends court justices. In recent weeks we have seen
repeated rounds of petitioning in favor of leftist causes signed by
numerous professors and other faculty members in the Israeli law
schools. These include a petition against singing Hatikva, signed by
scores of law professors. Law professors have also signed petitions
in favor of allowing the Hamas Sheikh Salah to speak on campus, as
well as petitions opposed to allowing a woman army colonel to teach on
campus. They have signed numerous other petitions in favor of leftist
pet causes in large numbers, including calls for boycotting Ariel
University and opposition to all Knesset initiatives against radical
leftist subversive NGOs.
At the same time it is all but impossible to find examples of law
professors speaking out in favor of freedom of speech for
non-leftists, or in denunciation of infringements of freedom of speech
for non-leftists. I am not aware of a single law professor who spoke
out against the harassments and arrests of rabbis in recent weeks,
when those rabbis dared to exercise freedom of speech. I am not aware
of a single law professor who denounced the suppression of freedom of
speech for Kahanists. I am not aware of a single law professor who
denounced the wave of leftist McCarthyism after the Rabin
assassination, in which freedom of speech for non-leftists was
massively suppressed and non-leftists who exercised that freedom were
denounced by the government as "inciters." I am not aware of a single
law professor who has spoken out against the anti-democratic
harassment by the deputy Attorney General of settlers and rightists.
I am not aware of a single law professor who denounced the firing of
Prof. Yeruham Leavitt for daring to express his "politically
incorrect" opinions at Ben Gurion University, this in spite of open
public appeals to those same law professors to take a stand, or the
firing of a high school teach who criticized the indoctrination into
"Rabin's doctrine" in schools. I am not aware of a single law
professor who has spoken out against SLAPP suit harassment in Israel.
I am not aware of a single law professor who has condemned Neve Gordon
and the Nazareth court for their behavior in the Plaut-Gordon lawsuit,
this despite appeals to these same professors to speak out, while I
know of a handful who have actually endorsed Gordon and the Nazareth
court.
In short, Israeli law schools have become home to masses of law
professors and other academics who are either fundamentally
anti-democratic, or are too intimidated and cowardly to take a public
stand in favor of freedom of speech. They take their lead from
Israel's anti-democratic judges. Meanwhile, Israeli judges and
leftists now are campaigning against a Knesset proposal to require
parliamentary approval of appointments of judges. They consider that
idea preposterous and monstrous. I mean, what does the Knesset think
this is here, the United States?
The Israeli Supreme Court is today a clear and present threat to the
liberties of Israelis. It is increasingly anti-democratic and
unwilling to defend freedom of speech. The Israeli parliament must
reform the Supreme Court. It should consider a moratorium in which
the Supreme Court is shut down altogether until that is accomplished.
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