Sunday, July 31, 2011
Posted
7/31/2011 01:22:00 PM
1. Israel's summer Woodstock on the Yarkon festival continues, with 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
Posted
7/29/2011 04:36:00 PM
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.
Posted
7/29/2011 12:20:00 PM
Israel really must do something about the violent anti-Rabbi 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
Posted
7/28/2011 07:21:00 PM
Israel is now awash in silliness with regard to the street 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
Posted
7/27/2011 06:57:00 PM
1. The latest judicial atrocity from the Israeli 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
Posted
7/24/2011 01:08:00 PM
1. Unlike all the other Israelis in love with Hagit Yaso, I can tell 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
Posted
7/24/2011 11:30:00 AM
1. http://hurryupharry.org/2011/07/23/anders-beivik-imagined-cautious-alliance-with-jihadists-we-both-share-one-common-goal/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
Posted
7/23/2011 10:10:00 PM
1. Well, golly gee. The entire world media is suddenly denouncing "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
Posted
7/22/2011 02:53:00 PM
Here is the opening statement from the PACBI.com web site, which 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.
Posted
7/22/2011 01:27:00 PM
This week I sent out several items related to the long-running 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
Posted
7/21/2011 11:03:00 AM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/3141 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.
Posted
7/21/2011 09:49:00 AM
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/the_threat_to_israeli_liberties_from_the_israeli_supreme_court.htmlThe 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. Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/07/the_threat_to_israeli_liberties_from_the_israeli_supreme_court.html
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