Steven Plaut |
Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university. |
Sunday, February 24, 2013
1. For all my fellow rednecks: Texas Swing version of Hava Nagila:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WF6irnzAiI 2. As you know, President Obama likes to go through the motions of commemorating Jewish holidays in the White House, like lighting Channuka candles. Well. We bring you here the Obama-DNC version of the Scroll of Esther for Purim: Chapter I And it came to pass in the third year of the reign of Achashverosh, King of Persia, that the King threw a great party. And it was during that party, that the King became intoxicated and called for his wife Vashti to come dance naked in front of the guests. Now, Vashti was a liberated woman, and was not at all ashamed to display her body in public ("my body, my choice," she used to say). But she was certainly not going to do so at the behest of a male chauvinist like her husband. So she refused to appear, and the following morning, in addition to a major hangover, Achashverosh had one royal-size sexual harassment suit waiting for him. Public opinion quickly turned against the King, and he was forced to settle out of court for an undisclosed sum of money. Chapter II It was after those events that the King missed Vashti, and wanted to find a new wife. He consulted his inner circle of advisors, which, in accordance with multi-cultural practices, consisted of, among others, one woman, one Indian, one Ethiopian, and one handicapped person, who was also rumored to be gay. One of his advisors, Memoochan, suggested holding a beauty contest, attended by all the fairest maidens in the land. But his female advisor informed him that Memoochan was a Neanderthal living in the dark ages, and that beauty contests where men gawk at women walking around in swimsuits had long ago gone out of fashion. Instead, she suggested giving a test in such subjects as physics, literature and music, and the most intelligent woman would be made queen. And the King, already lagging in the public opinion polls, had no choice, and he said to make it so. Now it just so happened that in the Kingdom of Persia there lived a young Jewish girl named Esther who was very beautiful, but much more importantly, had a 195 IQ. Having successfully sued her parents for termination of custody, she had been living with her uncle Mordechai. Esther aced the test and was chosen to be the new queen. Only, the homosexual community objected the word "queen," and the feminists didn't like the whole gender-based title thing, so it was decided that she would just be called "Royal Person." So Esther was crowned Royal Person of Persia and was married to King Achashverosh, though she kept her own last name. And being that Esther was an intelligent woman in her own right, and had no intention whatsoever of sitting quietly next to the King looking pretty, she was given her own staff of 15 and an office in the west wing of the palace. Chapter III It was after those events that King Achashverosh elevated his advisor Haman to be his chief advisor. There were some protests by the African-Persian community because he hadn't selected an African Persian to be his top advisor, by the appointment went through anyway. It turned out the Haman was a big anti-Semite, and he asked the King's permission to kill all the Jews, which he got. So Haman sent out a proclamation to all the lands in the kingdom outlining his plan. Distressed, the Jews sought a court-issued injunction to stop Haman from sending it. But Haman was defended by the head of the Persian Civil Liberties Union, who ironically was also Jewish, and who claimed that the injunction would violate Haman's right to free speech. And the injunction was not issued, so the proclamation was sent. Chapter IV And Mordechai knew of all that had happened, and he donned a black ribbon as a sign of mourning. And Esther sent a messenger to Mordechai to console him, but he would not be consoled. Then Mordechai sent word back to Esther that she should go the King and ask him to stop the impending killing of all the Jews. Esther replied that other social issues, such as the environment and harassment in the workplace were more pressing, but Mordechai persuaded her as to the urgency of the matter, and she agreed. Mordechai suggested calling all the Jews to synagogue for three days of fasting and prayers, but Esther thought that was way outdated, and instead called for a non-denominational candlelight vigil, and it was so. Chapter V And it came to pass on the third day that Esther put on her smartest business suit and went to see the King. The King offered Esther up to half his assets, which he was actually required to give her anyway, based on their pre-nup. Esther told the King that she had come to invite him and Haman to a big party she was throwing the next day. The King was very excited, and both he and Haman showed up to Royal Person Esther's party. The King, for his part, was careful not to violate the out-of-court settlement he had made with Vashti, and there was none of that "dance naked" stuff that night. The party was a big hit, with performances by Fleetwood Mac and crowd favorite Barbra Streisand. And Esther informed the King that both he and Haman were also invited to her next party, being thrown the following day on Martha's Vineyard. Upon leaving the party, Haman spotted his old nemesis Mordechai, which ruined his night. Haman's wife advised Haman to build a gallows 50 amot tall and ask the King to have Mordechai hanged the next day. She further advised him to quit referring to her as "Haman's Wife." And he built the gallows. Chapter VI That night, the King had trouble sleeping. He called for his servants to bring him a video to watch, but since having gotten rid of all his stag films as part of his sensitivity training following the Vashti debacle, all they had left were a bunch of movies filmed in Montana and produced by Robert Redford. So they brought him the royal archives instead, and there he read that Mordechai had done him a big favor a few years back. Just then, Haman came in, and the King asked him what to do for someone to whom he owed a favor. Haman suggested maybe an ambassadorship to some insignificant but warm-climate country, or maybe letting him spend a night in the palace's "Lincoln Bedroom." But the King decided to have Haman lead Mordechai around on a horse throughout the streets of Shushan. However, the animal rights activists got wind of the King's plan, and they went nuts, so it was decided that Haman would just lead Mordechai around on foot. And it was so. When he was done leading Mordechai around, Haman walked home, despondent. But no sooner had he returned home than the King's messengers arrived to bring him to Esther's second party. Haman's wife realized that her husband was doomed and commented that she had always known he would never amount to anything. Chapter VII And the King and Haman came to drink with Royal Person Esther. And it was during the party that Esther shocked the King by telling him that someone in that very room was plotting to kill her and all the other Jews. "Who is that man?" yelled the King. To which Esther replied "What makes you so sure it's a man? You don't think that a women is capable of killing all the Jewish people?" After an awkward silence, Esther told the King that is was, in fact, a man, and it was none other than his chief advisor Haman! The King stormed out in a fit a rage and meanwhile Haman begged at Esther's feet for her to spare his life. He told her how he had grown up in a broken home, was raised by a crack-selling mother and had never had a normal childhood. Esther declared Haman to be a product of society's failure to protect its children. So Haman's crime of "attempted genocide" was reduced to "issuing proclamations without a license" and he was given the relatively light sentence of five-to-seven years. After serving just two years of that sentence, he was given time off for good behavior and paroled. And the following year, the residents of Shushan elected Haman as their mayor, his being a felon notwithstanding. Meanwhile, Esther convinced the King to come to terms with his anger and latent feelings of hostility towards women, and the King entered a 12-step program and when he was through, his anger had subsided. Chapter VIII That day, the King gave Esther Haman's house, and she told the King that Mordechai was her uncle. And Mordechai asked the King's permission for the Jews to rise up and kill their enemies. But Esther would have no such thing, and instead, she arranged for a dialog being the Jewish leaders and the leaders of the people of Shushan. And while they couldn't overcome all their differences, they did agree to joint-author a letter of mutual acceptance and tolerance. Chapter IX And in the twelfth month, the month of Adar, on the day when the Jews were supposed to have been exterminated, the Jews held a three-day conference of the Leaders of Jewish Organizations. And during that conference, they agreed that a holiday should be established-the holiday of Purim. A holiday of charity and gift-giving. A holiday of brotherly love. A holiday where alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules would be suspended. A holiday where Jewish kids could dress up like Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers and not have to feel that they had missed out on something by not celebrating Halloween. And a proclamation was sent out to all the King's lands, in all 127 languages, plus Ebonics. And the Jews were careful not to mention G-d's name, lest any of the gentiles be offended. Chapter X And King Achashverosh--the kinder and gentler King Achashverosh--levied a tax across the land, to raise money to pay for welfare and public television. And the great deeds of Royal Person Esther and her uncle Mordechai were duly recorded in the annals of Persia. Friday, February 22, 2013
1. The following story is self-explanatory. It shows what has
become of Tel Aviv University. Shlomo Sand is an anti-Semitic Stalinist pseudo-academic with "expertise" in the French cinema. He now claims to be an authority on Jews and Judaism. http://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/shlomo-sand-at-soas-israel-a-shitty-nation-most-racist-society-in-world/ (go to page to link into the clips) Shlomo Sand at SOAS: Israel is "a shitty nation" and "the most racist society in the world". Posted on February 21, 2013 | Shlomo Sand in full flow at SOAS last night. Last night Tel Aviv University history professor Shlomo Sand referred to Israel as a "shitty nation" (clip 1). He called Israel "the most racist society in the world" and said that he has been fighting "Jewish racism all my life" (both clip 2). And he declared that anti-Semitism doesn't exist in the western world today (clip 3). He was speaking in London at the SOAS launch of his new book The Invention of The Land of Israel. The much discredited thesis of his previous book The Invention of The Jewish People is that there was no expulsion of the Jews from the Holy Land; diaspora Jews, therefore, must have all descended from converts and so have no right to return to Israel. The already much discredited thesis of The Invention of The Land of Israel is, simply, that the land of Israel holds no religious significance for Jews either. First, he claimed, there is no mention of "Israel" in the bible; it is only mentioned in the Talmud. This is not true (see note 1). Second, he claimed that political Zionism grew out of Christianity, not Judaism, and he solely credits Lord Shaftesbury and the evangelical Christian movement in London for the idea that Jews should return to the Holy Land. But Sand, conveniently, regards great religious figures like Rabbi Alkalia and Rabbi Kalischer, who in the early nineteenth century wrote voraciously about the pressing need for Jews to return to Zion, as only minority influences. Sand claimed that the Balfour Declaration came about due to three main reasons: 1. The ideological background of many leaders who wanted Redemption via a Jewish return to the Holy Land. 2. The colonialist interests of Britain in the Middle East. 3. Anti-Semitism – Balfour didn't want suffering Jews from the East coming to Britain. Sand said Jews preferred to move to America but after 1924, when America stopped eastern European immigration altogether, no country would accept Jews who then had no choice but to go to the Holy Land against their will. Sand, again, conveniently ignores the examples of the Jewish pioneers in the Hibbat Zion and BILU movements who volunteered to move to the harsh conditions of the Holy Land during the 1880s to try to make a life there. Sand views Israelis as a nation even if a "shitty one". But, for Sand, they aren't a Jewish nation because he doesn't recognise such a concept exists. Sand views being Jewish as a purely religious concept and said that Hamas in Gaza are much more likely to be descended from the ancient people who once inhabited the Holy Land than he is. Sand says he desires a two-state solution with equal rights for Arabs living in Israel and for Jews living in a future Palestine. Presumably, it would be an Israel where diaspora Jews would have limited, if any, rights to move to. And on anti-Semitism Sand said: "The century of anti-Semitism between 1850 and 1950 is finished. Pro-Zionists don't understand history. I don't think that political public anti-Semitism exists today in the western world. You cannot find members of Parliament in Britain or the United States who are openly anti-Semitic. You cannot find journalists who are anti-Semitic. You cannot find films that are anti-Semitic." This is what many in the audience wanted to hear. It was their official certificate that they are not Jew haters even though they focus solely on opposing the Jewish state while ignoring atrocities by both sides in Syria, by Hamas in Gaza and by the Saudi Arabian monarchy and the Iranian government which both brutally oppress their own people. To name but a few. Once again, Sand conveniently ignores or is unaware of the example of Liberal Democrat David Ward who recently accused "the Jews" of inflicting something akin to a Holocaust on the Palestinians. Sand is the master of cherry-picking anything that backs up his argument while ignoring anything inconvenient that might detract from it. His recent books are not based on proper fact, record or history. They are simply driven by a hatred for the Jewish state. Notes: 1. For a superb taking down of Sand's new book see here via Elder of Ziyon. 2. For a superb analysis of Sand speaking at The Frontline Club the previous night see here via Jonathan Hoffman. Clips from last night (not good sound quality): Clip 1 – Sand declares Israel a "shitty nation": See also: http://www.thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/shlomos-away-with-the-fairies If you would like to complain to the university that refuses to fire Sand, write to: Tel Aviv University: President, Professor Joseph Klafter Email klafter@post.tau.ac.il Tel Aviv University P.O. Box 39040 Tel Aviv 69978 ISRAEL Tel: 972-3-6408254 Fax: 972-3-6406466 Rector: Prof. Aron Shai Email: aashai@post.tau.ac.il and rector@post.tau.ac.il Tel Aviv University P.O. Box 39040 Tel Aviv 69978 ISRAEL American Friends Offices of Tel Aviv University: http://www.aftau.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_contact Other "Friends of" Groups: http://www.tau.ac.il/friends-eng.html 2. A bit long but you may find interesting: The Collapse of Iran's Rial: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3597/iran-rial-collpase 3. Citation From Carl Jung. The Collected Works Volume 18, The Symbolic Life, 1939, Princeton, Princeton University Press p. 281. first appeared here: Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, 1939 Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist, was asked in the late 1930s in an interview if he had any views on what was likely to be the next step in religious development. He replied, referring to the rise of Nazism in Germany, "We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is already on the way; he is like Muhammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god. That can be the historic future." Some other similar citations are here in an interesting piece: http://www.newenglishreview.org/Ibn_Warraq/Apologists_of_Totalitarianism%3A_From_Communism_to_Islam,_Part_I/#_ftn10 4. Learn the truth about BDS - go to PACBI.com David Newman justifies BDS at http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/BGU%20-%20David%20Newman%20-%20justifies%20BDS.htm Wednesday, February 20, 2013
The following was posted and published exactly ten years ago. So many
have forgotten those dark days. I think the time is apt for re-posting. The comments are still relevant: http://www.jewishpressclassifieds.com/pageroute.do/14563/ Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee By: Steven Plaut Date: Friday, January 17 2003 Consider a country in which the minister of justice prepares an official ''speech code'' that delineates the boundaries of permissible speech, and where violators may be sent to prison. Consider a country in which people are arrested for expressing criticism or dissent, even if it is in a casual conversation in a cafe, a bank or a barber shop. Consider a country in which the minister of education calls upon school pupils and their parents to report to the police the names of teachers who make ''incendiary statements'' or engage in ''incitement.'' Consider a country where people are afraid to express their political opinions for fear of being overheard by informants and where people look over their shoulders before daring to speak candidly about politics. Consider a country in which rabbis are openly vilified by the leaders of the state, where politicians, journalists and professors call for the wholesale arrest of rabbis and religious dissidents, where scores of rabbis are interrogated by the police for ''inciting.'' Consider a country where religious Jews walking down the street are insulted and called ''murderers'' and other foul names by passersby. Consider a country where a popular radio host calls for a law that would require that all dissidents either recant their views and endorse government policies or go to prison; or where a newspaper columnist closely identified with the ruling party declares that Voltaire's famous statement (where he says that he would die for the rights to free speech for those with whom he disagrees) represents the most absurd and ridiculous idea imaginable. Imagine a country where teenagers are imprisoned for making statements and posters that are in poor taste, or where an old man can be arrested for losing his temper and shouting at a policeman, ''What do you think this is here, a police state? Imagine a country where people can be arrested for making jokes that some might regard as being in poor taste. Imagine a country in which dissidents quoting old statements by the prime minister himself or who quote from the Bible could be arrested on charges of engaging in incitement and rebellion. Now ask yourselves, does all of the above describe the Habsburg Empire during the worst Franciscan repressions of the early 19th century? Or maybe some totalitarian country before the fall of communism? Or perhaps a fictitious government in some Orwellian political novel? No, I'm afraid the above is an exact description of Israel as it was in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Each example refers to an actual event that occurred in Israel in the months after that murder. Seven years after the event, Israel is still in a state of shock from the Rabin assassination. One of the most harmful and dangerous aftershocks to that murder has been a long series of assaults upon the fundamental democratic freedoms and rights of Israeli citizens, led mainly by the Israeli Left. Rabin's body was not yet cold when an anti-democratic theory of the assassination was invented. In the following days, not only was this theory repeated endlessly, but it assumed the status of revealed gospel. The theory holds that the assassination was caused by irresponsible speech, by calls of ''Rabin is a Murderer/Traitor,'' by incitement and agitation on the part of anti-Oslo dissidents. In response to this theory-as-gospel, there were repeated calls in Israel for new legislation to suppress ''oral violence'' and ''incitement.'' In 1995 the minister of justice even prepared a new law that would have instituted a sort of a national ''speech code'' delineating the boundaries of acceptable speech (it was never implemented). The governments of both Labor and Likud approved decisions to make a growing list of organizations on the Israeli ''far right'' illegal, simply on the basis of their positions and opinions. A long list of people were investigated and/or indicted for ''incitement.'' Following the assassination, an assault on dissent and democracy was launched by Israel's politicians from the Labor Party and the leftist Meretz. For example, a call to pupils and parents to inform to the police on teachers engaging in ''incitement'' came from the minister of education under the Labor Party's administration, Professor Amnon Rubinstein of Meretz. Rubinstein is a well-known expert on constitutional law, which he taught for many years at Tel Aviv University. Prosecutions of people for having expressed anti-Oslo opinions continued even under Likud administrations. All of this is no less frightening and alarming than the assassination itself. It is particularly troubling because the new orthodoxy is itself patently false. It is also dangerous because the criminalizing and prosecution of extremists on the far right could in fact lead to an upsurge in violence. First, despite the shock that we all felt and feel, it behooves us to recall that Rabin was not killed by free speech, but by a murderer with a gun. Second, is there anyone who seriously believes that the murderer would not have carried out this crime if every single demonstrator at every single anti-Oslo demonstration had spoken with restraint and expressed his criticism of the government in eloquent and civilized words? Third, if ''vile speech'' causes assassination, then Israel should have had an endless carnage of its political leaders ever since independence (if not beforehand). Israeli political discourse is and always has been characterized by rhetorical overkill, ad hominem slander, and unrestrained high- decibel shrieking. Anyone with any doubts should go read the protocols of the Knesset from the 1950's, when even back then, in the pre-television era, Knesset debate was constantly peppered with cries of ''Fascist,'' ''Traitor,'' ''Dictator,'' ''Criminal,'' etc., coming from all sides of the chamber. David Ben-Gurion himself frequently referred to his chief ideological opponent, Vladimir Jabotinsky, as ''Vladimir Hitler.'' Perhaps it is Israel's proximity to the Mediterranean, but political discussion here is and always has been uncivilized. (Any doubters should watch the weekly political barroom brawl on Israeli television, Popolitika.) Yet until this crime, no political leader was ever assassinated in Israel. That is because vile or angry speech does not cause assassination. The orthodoxy regarding the Rabin assassination was in part motivated by the fact that a handful of Israeli fanatics expressed public approval when they heard of the assassination. But if that?s against the law, will it also become a crime to say, ''I believe the government is betraying Zionism,'' or ''I believe certain politicians are collaborating with Arab murderers,'' or ''I believe the Israeli Labor Party is pandering to those who wish to destroy Israel,'' or ''Mitzna is betraying the country's interest''? Will all these statements become grounds for prosecution? Where will the criminalization of dissent stop? Vile speech is not a monopoly of hotheads of the Israeli right, as the anti-Begin demonstrators in 1982-83 proved during Israel's ''Peace in Galilee'' campaign in Lebanon. Their slogan was ''Begin and Sharon are Murderers and War Criminals.'' No one was assassinated as a result of this. I myself was present in many a demonstration against the Vietnam War (yes, we all have skeletons in our closet over which we wince) in which the president of the United States was called a murderer and worse, and where people openly called for the assassination of both the president and vice president. The anti-Bush demonstrators before and during the Gulf War were no less vile, as are the pro-Saddam campus demonstrators this year. But no political assassinations followed. Every year, on the anniversary of the Rabin assassination, Israel's leftists and their captive media recite the accusations over and over again: that Rabin was really murdered by the exercise of free speech by the Likud and the opponents of Oslo. This is nothing but leftist McCarthyism, of course. The Likud had nothing to do with the crime of Yigal Amir. Why are the calls for suppressing 'vile and incendiary speech' limited to restrictions on the vile statements and behavior of extremists from the Right? Why the arbitrary and selective bias? Are vile and fanatic and tasteless statements a monopoly of the Right? And is there any shortage of criminals who sprang up from the fringes of the Left? It is enough to recall nuclear traitor Mordecai Vanunu and the espionage/terror ring led by Udi Adiv, all black sheep from the far left. What about the countless leftist statements justifying Palestinian terrorism in general and especially when targeting settlers? How do we know that these did not inspire murders and bombings? Leftists insist that only rightist speech stimulates violence, not leftist speech. Their ''proof'' consists of a single example: Yigal Amir holds rightist views, no doubt listened to such views expressed by others, and killed Rabin. Of course, Yigal Amir was also a law student, but no one has asserted that it was the studying of law that caused him to murder Rabin. And what about the countless calls by Israeli Arab politicians and leaders for Israel to be annihilated? What about Arabs who said ''Good'' after the Rabin assassination? What about Arab college students who chant ''In fire and blood we will redeem Palestine!'' or who decorate their subsidized dorm rooms with photos of suicide bombers and Hizbullah flags? What about Arab Knesset Members and other politicians who called on Saddam Hussein to exterminate the Jews of Israel or who call for escalating intifada violence? What about Arab demonstrators whose standard chant is ''Butcher the Jews!''? The proponents of the politically correct theory of free speech and incitement have always argued that these forms of speech by Arabs should be tolerated with equanimity. In post-Rabin Israel, these are all forms of protected speech. How many Jews have been murdered by terrorists inspired by these forms of expression? Finally, it is conceivable that abridging the freedom of speech of extremists could inflame violence rather than suppress it. In recent years it has been hypothesized that some extremists in the U.S. were driven into the violent neo-Nazi militias by the FBI?s actions in Waco, Texas and in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The Oklahoma City bomber claimed he was inspired by those FBI actions. In Israel, the Kahanists from Kach have been driven underground because their opinions have been criminalized. Kach and its affiliates have been declared ''terrorist organizations'' and have been banned as ''racist organizations'' under Israel's arbitrarily applied ''anti-racist'' laws. Arab political parties and politicians advocating genocide of Jews have never been similarly indicted or criminalized. Kach was banned from running for election, and the leaders of Kach arrested repeatedly for expressing unpopular opinions. These actions were cheered on by American Jewish leaders, even though they would clearly violate the First Amendment if carried out in America, where Kahanist groups operate openly and legally. Is it inconceivable that banning the expression of views by Kach loyalists may actually have driven some to violence? Does the political establishment think that Kahanists will suddenly repent because of the new suppression of ''incitement,'' convert their opinions, embrace moderation and the discredited Oslo peace process? When people are denied the right to express their opinions, they sometimes turn to violence as an alternative. The murder of Rabin was a terrible tragedy. Israel must prevent it from becoming an even worse disaster, one in which the country?s basic democratic freedoms are abridged. Tuesday, February 19, 2013
1. Meet the BDS-holes:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/the-nazi-roots-of-the-boycott-israel-movement/ (see web page for links and sources) The Nazi Roots of the Boycott-Israel Movement Posted By Steven Plaut On February 19, 2013 The so-called "BDS" movement is nothing less than a poorly-disguised campaign of bigotry and aggression against Jews by anti-Semites and jihadists. While its roots go back far earlier, ever since the 1930s the first manifestation of Nazi-like anti-Semitism has been to organize economic boycotts against Jews. On the day Hitler came to power in 1933 he ordered a nationwide campaign of BDS or "boycotts, divestment and sanctions" against Germany's Jews. It was of course only the opening round in economic warfare and aggression directed against Jews. The Germans claimed that they were actually the victims of the Jews, who were occupying German territory. Sound familiar? The Arab countries quickly took note of the lessons from Germany. As soon as Israel's existence and independence were proclaimed, the Islamofascist world announced a total BDS campaign, including a trade embargo, against Israel. This boycott was generally also implemented against non-Israeli Jews, removing any doubt as to the real agenda of the boycotters. That boycott is still by and large in effect, although here and there one can see cracks in it. Syrian Arabs injured by the Assad junta feel no hesitation to flee to the Israeli border and ask for medical assistance, which they get for free, and Arabs from the Gulf states quietly fly to Israel to get medical treatments. The latest manifestation of Boycott-the-Jews anti-Semitism is in the campus "BDS" movement. Like the previous boycotts, the newer "BDS" is nothing more than a campaign of economic warfare and aggression against Jews. The main aggressors these days are small groups of campus anti-Semites and brownshirts from the Far Left and the Far Right, joined by Islamofascists. The recent campus Day of Anti-Semitic Hatred at Brooklyn College was just the tip of the swastika, and was thoroughly denounced by Alan Dershowitz and others. The same university administrators who would order in the state troopers to prevent any "conference" on the genetic inferiority of black folks or on the mental deficiencies of homosexuals are the first to defend academic pogroms against Jews in the name of freedom of speech. Can campus Holocaust Denial Rallies be far behind? You can see a leading British BDS advocate posing in front of an Arab swastika, used by the Syrian neo-Nazi group, the SSNP, here. The resemblance to Judith Butler and her recent appearance at the Brooklyn College Hatefest is, in the immortal words of Yoggi Berra, too coincidental to be a coincidence. It is more than a bit ironic that the anti-Semites who are running the so-called BDS campaign choose to adopt for themselves a term that has an older meaning of pathological aggression in those suffering from dementia. In psychiatry, BDS stands for Behavioral Dyscontrol Scale. But the psychiatrists got only part of the picture right. Probably a better definition of BDS is Bigots, Dingbats and Scoundrels. An entire web site that mocks PACBI.org, the main BDS organization, is a must-see at Pacbi.com. The original anti-Semitic PACBI name stands for the "Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel." The mock site defines "Pacbi" as Pathetic Assholes Conspiring to Boycott Israel. Its front page message is worth citing: '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. Omar Barghouti is the Arab graduate student in Israel who set up the original BDS organization, PACBI.org. He was a bit foolishly admitted as a MA student (in philosophy) into Israel's Tel Aviv University and then decided to show his gratitude for that by organizing a one-jihadist pogrom against the existence of the country that was educating him. (The philosophy department at TAU is itself a den of anti-Israel radical leftist agitprop.) So the leading advocate of world boycotts of Israeli academic institutions is unwilling to boycott them himself and drop out of his own degree program. He stayed registered in the "Zionist" institution, collecting his cushy fellowship handouts.' But the irony does not end there. Barghouti is not a Palestinian at all. He was born in Qatar and was raised in Egypt, making him a sort of Edward Said "Palestinian," meaning a non-Palestinian. Barghouti not only hates Jews. He also hates white people and proclaims them to be an inferior race! Really! He is quoted thus: "For some peculiar reason Omar Barghouti, BDS's leading activist makes some biologically determinist remarks. He for instance declares that he won't take a lecture from a 'white person'. But Barghouti doesn't stop there, he clearly makes a connection between 'skin colour', political stand and violence. It seems as if Barghouti is also aware of himself making a racist statement when he suggests that 'the white race is the most violent in history of mankind.'" So says the Egyptian. In his exposeé of Barghouti in Frontpage Magazine, writer Daniel Greenfield reveals: "Omar Barghouti is a distant cousin of Marwan Barghouti and Mustafa Barghouti. Marwan Barghouti is a major terrorist leader serving five life sentences for numerous murders. Mustafa Barghouti was a Soviet-educated Communist leader and a candidate for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority." He adds: "Omar Barghouti tried to latch on to Occupy Wall Street by claiming to represent 'the global 99 percent.' Considering how much money and power the Barghoutis have, they are the 1 percent, both locally and globally. Anyone who has seen the mansions of the ruling elite in the West Bank can only laugh at Omar's assertion that Israel is part of the 1 percent exploiting the rest of humanity, while the influential clans like the Barghoutis are the 99 percent." Writing on the Huffington Post, the left-of-center French philosopher Bernard Henry Levi called the BDS "movement" a lot of "crap." He explains: 'Why? First of all, because one boycotts totalitarian regimes, not democracies. One can boycott Sudan, guilty of the extermination of part of the population of Darfur. One can boycott China, guilty of massive violations of human rights in Tibet and elsewhere. One can and should boycott the Iran of Sakineh and Jafar Panahi, whose leaders have become deaf to the language of common sense and compromise. One can even imagine, as we once did with regard to the fascist generals' Argentina or Brezhnev's USSR, boycotting those Arab regimes whose citizens' freedom of expression is forbidden and punished, if necessary, in blood. One does not boycott the only society in the Middle East where Arabs read a free press, demonstrate when they wish to do so, send freely elected representatives to parliament, and enjoy their rights as citizens. Regardless of what one thinks of the policies of its government, one does not boycott the only country in the region and, beyond the region, one of the unfortunately limited number of countries in the world where voters have the power to sanction, modify, and reverse the position of said government.' The racism of the boycotters is not even hidden from view. The BDS gang are not boycotting any Israeli Arabs and not even Israeli leftist Jews, at least not usually. In fact they do not even boycott Israeli Arabs who own property and assets in the "occupied" West Bank. After all, if you thought that no Israelis have the right to own property there because it is "occupied" territory, almost like Corsica, how come the Israeli Arabs who do so get a free pass from the BDSholes, the term a growing number of commentators are calling them? The other irony of course is that BDS aggression and warfare harms Israeli Arabs and other non-Jews, as well as Jews. To the extent that Israeli exports are harmed, those working in export industries lose out, and there are plenty of Arab workers and entrepreneurs affected. Not just in Israel but also in the "West Bank." The BDSholes recently decided to target "Sodastream," an Israeli company that makes fashionable environmentally-friendly nifty devices for dispensing carbonated water for mixing drinks. The boycott of it by the BDS gang is harming Palestinian employees of the company. But you've got to hand it to the boycotters. They hate Jews so much that they want Jews harmed even if the campaign also harms Arabs. After all, Arabs are nothing more than an instance of collateral damage in the holy war of aggression and jihad against the Jews. In the view of the BDSholes, Arabs never are entitled to any human rights protection in Arab countries. Arabs need protection only when this serves to undermine, endanger, and demonize the Jews. In all other cases, let them eat stale pita! 2. Let's spank Bill Maher: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/bill-maher-goes-full-bore-anti-semitic/ 3. Correction: Eitan Haber, subject of a posting a couple of days back, was NOT a member of the Knesset (as he was incorrectly described by me), but WAS the Labor Party consigliere for Yitzhak Rabin and other Labor Party officials. Monday, February 18, 2013
1. A Purim Spoof that went bad:
http://myrightword.blogspot.co.il/2008/03/plauts-purim-spoof.html 2. The political lessons of Purim: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/6087 3. The Purim Clown: http://zioncon.blogspot.co.il/2011/03/purim-clown-1997.html 4. The Politically Correct Scroll of Esther: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/2104 5. Hobsbawm and His Admirers http://hurryupharry.org/2013/02/18/hobsbawm-and-his-admirers/ Guest Post, February 18th 2013, 4:27 pm This is a guest post by Paul Bogdanor Almost 20 years ago, the communist historian Eric Hobsbawm gave the following answers in an interview: Q: In 1934, millions of people are dying in the Soviet experiment. If you had known that, would it have made a difference to you at that time? To your commitment? To being a communist? A: … Probably not… Q: What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified? A: Yes. (Times Literary Supplement, October 28, 1994) More recently, the author David Pryce-Jones recalled witnessing another such exchange: At a dinner to which we were both invited, [Hobsbawm] first glorified Castro's Cuba to another guest, the British ambassador there at the time, and then went on to say that a nuclear bomb ought to be dropped on Israel, because it was better to kill 5 million Jews now than 200 million innocent people in a world war later. (National Review, October 29, 2012) Tomorrow, Independent Jewish Voices will be holding a book launch in London. IJV is a fringe group that likes to flaunt its ethical superiority to the vast majority of British Jews who do not hate the Jewish state. IJV is dedicating the event to Eric Hobsbawm. 6. British Anti-Semitism: http://hurryupharry.org/2013/02/18/mark-gardner-on-antisemitism/ Sunday, February 17, 2013
I suppose it is not really news when it is discovered that leftism
and treason go together hand in hand. Nevertheless there are two revelations associated in one way or another with the "Prisoner X" affair that help to renew our appreciation of how thoroughly these two things are intertwined. If you have not been following the "Prisoner X" story very closely, or if you have been following it closely but do not understand what the ruckus is all about, I am afraid that you and I are on the same page. The story was released last week after having been kept quiet for quite a while. By "being kept quiet" I mean from the media. The actual people involved, including the family of "Prisoner X" and just about everyone in Australia knew all about it and in fact some had been visiting the perp. For a couple of years, anti-Semitic bloggers have been spreading the rumor that Israel had seized and was holding in secret captivity an important espionage figure, named as an Iranian general by these bloggers. The anti-Semitic unemployed pro-Iran blogger from Seattle, Richard Silverstein, who likes to claim he is Israel's "Wikileaks," had a wikileak in his shorts when it turned out that the "jailed Iranian" he had been "reporting" about was in fact an Australian Jew (see http://www.israellycool.com/2013/02/12/sloppy-dick-strikes-again-2/). (This is noteworthy because some of the less intelligent journalists on the planet, including a few in Israel, like to cite Dickie Silverstein as if he has any credibility and as if he is a serious journalistic source. If you want to see who this Silverstein really is, go to www.kapodickie.blogspot.com and especially http://kapodickie.blogspot.co.il/2009/03/oh-boo-hoo-kapo-dickie-whines-about.html .) Anyway, while only portions of the story have emerged and are clarified, it turns out that "Prisoner X" was one Ben Zygier, an youngish Australian Jew who was active in the Marxist Hashomer Haztair movement and moved to Israel to live on one such Hashomer Haztair Marxist kibbutz for a while. You will see in a moment why I emphasize that. Some of the following is based on filling in the blanks and reading between the media lines (as usual, I have no insider information). But it looks like Comrade Zygier was recruited at some point by the Mossad, Israel's CIA, and played some sort of role in the assassination of a Hamas senior operative in Dubai, one Mahmoud al Mabhouh. According to media accounts, Israeli agents used foreign passports to get into Dubai and then to "recycle" the terrorist. You may recall that at the time I posted a blog item in which I offered the Israeli agency to use my own passport any time it wanted. In any case, as far as can be understood from the coyness in the media reports, Zygier's role was to find some Aussies and maybe Kiwis whose passports could be used for the operation. For reasons that are not clear but I suspect have to do with him being a Marxist, it seems that Zygier then changed sides and started leaking details about that operation to Gulf Arabs working for Iran. Israel was trying to keep the business about the foreign passports quiet, although I think most of the world long ago learned about this, and so Israel arrested Zygier and tossed him into solitary, in fact into the very same cell once occupied by Yigal Amir, the assassin of Rabin. Why all this should interest the media more than the holding of al-Qaeda terrorists in prisons around the world (and not only in Gitmo) is not clear. Zygier was kept there, not entirely secretly or incommunicado, and his family from Australian paid him regular visits. At some point he committed suicide, something that people in jail sometimes do. This happened two years back. So this old story became a new story when the non-Israeli media started gabbing about it and eventually the Attorney General in Israel okayed reporting it. (Israel has an almost-never-used censor official for discussion in the media of some sensitive military secrets, things like names of agents.) And that is pretty much it. One curious twist to this is that almost NO ONE in the media is mentioning Zygier's Marxism or ties to the Far Left in Israel, and in fact I myself only discovered it buried in small fonts on an inside page. One would think that the fact that an apparent traitor and double agent was also a Far Leftist might carry some interest. But the other interesting twist to all this is in an Op-Ed today in Yediot Ahronot published by Eitan Haber. He is a hardcore Labor Party Menshivik in Israel and has sat in the Knesset. He may be best known for being the official who spoke to the media and announced officially that Yitzhak Rabin had been murdered. Haber then was a leader in the movement of McCarthyism to paint all non-leftists as complicit in Rabin's murder and to insist that Rabin was murdered by the exercise of freedom of speech by Rabin's critics. Anyhow, ordinarily Haber's opinions are not worthy of debunking. But in today's column he reveals another interesting connection between treason and leftism. He discusses the case of the nuclear spy Mordecai Vanunu. As you recall, Vanunu was arrested while trying to reveal oodles of secrets about Israel's nuclear capabilities and infrastructure. Vanunu was a communist who held a minor position in the Dimona nuclear facilities (talk about incompetence of Israeli intelligence services!), and somehow got access to sensitive materials. He had become an anti-Israel communist when he was a student at Ben Gurion University (does that surprise you?). He has since become the resident martyr saint for anti-Israel communists all over the world, including people like Noam Chomsky. Well, in his column today Haber releases some details about the Vanunu treason that were not previously known, at least not by me. It seems that at first some details of the espionage and arrest of Vanunu were leaking out and reaching the British media, including an offer by Vanunu to sell documents he had stolen from the nuclear facility. The same British media who later broke the story were skeptical that the story was for real and refused to run it. Meanwhile, the Israeli government was assembling some Israeli journalists to speak with them quietly about how the story should be handled if it broke. Right after that meeting, the editor in chief of Haaretz, Gershon Shoken, telephoned the Haaretz reporter in the UK, who then made sure the British media knew about the briefing in Israel. The Brits then understood that the story was for real and ran it, with all the collateral damage this caused. Haber's motive for telling this story is that he wants readers to understand that, in such matters, SH*T Happens. My motive in reporting the story is that I want readers to understand that Leftist Treason Happens, including in the Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew, Haaretz, and in Marxist Hashomer kibbutzim. It also behooves us to bear in mind that when it comes to Labor Party McCarthyism, Haber Happens. Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Now that Netanyahu is once again waving about the slogan of a
"Two-State Solution" (see this: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4343800,00.html), and never mind that he was just re-elected by voters who were convinced he had completely abandoned that delusion, I thought the time was ripe for re-posting my earlier proposal for a Two-State Solution. This is the only two-state solution that is feasible, and one over which all Israelis from all parts of the spectrum can be brought together to back it in consensus. It is based on two states for two peoples. It goes like this: The Jews keep their one state, controlling all the land west of the Jordan River. The Arabs then give up 21 out of their 22 states. They retain just one out of those 22 states, which will be centered in the Arab homeland, Saudi Arabia, ending their occupation of all other lands belonging to other peoples. That leaves two states for two peoples. SImple!
The Newest Charge of the Speech Brigade
The Likud government and its leftist Attorney General continue to jihad against freedom of speech in Israel. The Likud has always been devoted to defending freedom of speech for Arab fascists and for Jewish anti-Israel radical leftists, just not for anyone else. Under the Likud *much like under the Labor Party Mensheviks), the Kahanists were criminalized and denied freedom of speech. People making "insensitive" or "racist" comments or having insensitive bumper stickers or Tee shirts were arrested, but only if they were being insensitive towards Arabs. Likudian Israel still enforces Israel's ridiculous "anti-racism" laws that allow the police to arrest Jews making anti-Arab comments. All of Israel is subject to a "speech code." Let us be clear. In real democracies it is not a crime to make a racist or insensitive or bigoted comment. If it were, half the universities in the United States would be shut down for issuing anti-Semitic statements. If you make an intolerant racist comment in a real democracy, you might get punched in the nose but the police will not arrest you. Civilized people may repudiate you or mock you or dismiss you. But you will NOT be taken to jail. Israel's semi-democratic regime has a long track record of suppressing freedom of speech and arresting people for the "crime" of "racism." Judges studiously refuse to defend freedom of speech. A rabbi who wrote a book deemed "racist" was harassed by the police, as were other rabbis who recommended that people read the book. People have been arrested for wearing "anti-Arab" tee shirts or having bumper stickers on their cars, where "anti-Arab" would include slogans like "Those who want rights must also fulfill obligations," or "I like Rabbi Kahane." A Jewish woman did hard jail time in prison for drawing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed as a pig. [Drawing Jews as long-nosed caricatures drinking the blood of Arab children is protected speech though.] You may regard such a cartoon as vulgar and offensive, but Israel is the only Western democracy where anti-Moslem cartoonists are jailed (unlike Holland and Denmark!). Salman Rushdie could be jailed under Israel's speech code.. The criminalization of "bigotry" in Israel is entirely selective. No Arabs or leftists are jailed or indicted for making anti-Jewish comments or publishing anti-Semitic tracts or books (such as those by Tel Aviv University professor Shlomo Sand, which are required reading at TAU!). Arab students may chant openly on campus support for suicide bombings against Jews and the campus authorities defend this as academic freedom. But a Ben Gurion University professor who expressed the opinion that it may not be healthy for children to be raised by homosexual couples was fired by BGU president Rivka Carmi. THAT, you see, was intolerable bigotry. Arabs calling upon Iran to drop nuclear weapons on Tel Aviv is protected speech in Netanyahu's Israel. Calling upon Jews not to lease apartments in Jewish neighborhoods to Arabs will get you arrested, as will calling on Jewish women not to date Arabs. (Arab women who date Jewish men of course are subject to honor killings.) Even calling on men not to date other men might just get you into hot water. The political establishment in Israel wants the entire country to be subjected to a national speech code, one that prohibits making "insensitive" comments, but only those about Arabs (and gays). I have in the past on occasion commented about soccer hooliganism in Israel. Like in most of the rest of the world, soccer fans in Israel get rowdy and vulgar. Some of the soccer teams are those of Arab towns, and, at matches between Jewish and Arab teams, the fans tend to yell things at the other side such as "Kill all the Jews" or "I hate Arabs." I do not approve of such things, and in fact in the past have proposed that the rest of society deal with the vulgarity by requiring that all sports events reporting in the media be conducted in Latin. But I also do not think that those making such catcalls are breaking any law or deserve to be imprisoned. Washing their mouths out with soap would be fine with me. But the Likud regime disagrees. Making moronic "racist" catcalls at soccer matches is a crime in Netanyahu's Israel, and only when the catcalls are anti-Arab. Think I am exaggerating? Take a look at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/165115 As you see there, the police, no doubt at the orders of the leftist Attorney General, have started rounding up Jewish catcallers but not Arab catcallers. "Massacre the Jews" is protected speech in Israel. Saying "Muhammad was no prophet, just another Arab" however is hate speech. Two young Jews were arrested by the police for the "crime" of making this "anti-Arab" catcall at the soccer match. Now just for the record, the number of "civil rights" groups and activists, the number of law professors terribly concerned about freedom of speech, and the number of Israeli Democracy Institute members who have spoken out against this arbitrary assault against freedom of speech for Jews is exactly zero! Here is the INN news story: Cops Charge Pair With 'Racist Speech' at Soccer Game Police moved swiftly Monday to indict two Jerusalem residents on charges of racism over catcalls they made Sunday night at a soccer game By David Lev First Publish: 2/11/2013, 10:06 PM Police moved swiftly Monday to indict two Jerusalem residents on charges of racism over catcalls they made Sunday night at a soccer game Sunday night between Beitar Jerusalem and the Bnei Sakhnin team. Hundreds of police were present at the game in order to prevent racial tension, with fans of Beitar and visiting Arab teams often facing off with each other over insults and threats mounted by each side against the other. Beitar fans have complained numerous times that Arab fans visiting the stadium incite to racism and hatred against Jews, calling for "death to Israel" and "death to the Jews," and even waving PLO flags. The media has ignored those complaints, instead focusing on Arab complaints that Jewish fans call them names or make them feel unwelcome. The two fans, 27 and 18 years of age, are accused of getting up and shouting that they "hate Arabs," and that "Muhammad was no prophet, just another Arab." Police arrested the two, and filed charges against them of making use of racist speech. A Jerusalem court released them until trial, but they were instructed to remain far away from Teddy Stadium, where Beitar plays its games. In order to ensure that they follow the rules, the two have been instructed to report to their police stations during each half of a game played by Beitar Jerusalem at the stadium. See also http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/164703 and http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/continued-media-double-standard-against-israel/ 2. New anti-Semitic campaign by the Chomsky: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/165145 3. Why Israel is the victim: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/why-israel-is-the-victim/ 4. Islamic Apartheid Week: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/islamic-apartheid-week/ 5. The Fisher resignation: http://www.jewishexponent.com/a-look-back-for-bank-of-israel's-departing-head 6. The Whitewashing of Hate: http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Daniel%20Bar-Tal%20-%20Defending%20Arab%20Terror.htm Thursday, February 07, 2013
Questions And Answers About 'Peace'
By Steven Plaut Q: With Obama about to visit the country, should Israel agree to attend new negotiation sessions with the Palestinian Authority? A: No. Nothing positive can come out of it. For twenty years Israel has been attending "talks" with the Palestinians and these have achieved absolutely nothing other than Israeli capitulation. In each round of talks Israel has given away more and more assets and made an ever-growing number of concessions, getting nothing in return. Q: Why give up hope that the Palestinians will agree to some sort of deal? A: Because they have yet to comply with a single punctuation mark in any of the agreements they have already signed. Q: So what should Israel offer the Palestinians? A: Nothing at all. Q: Nothing? A: Israel should make demands instead of making offers of concessions. It should make no new offers of anything until long lists of its own demands are fully met. Q: But how then can Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians? A: It can't. Making endless concessions has no more chance of achieving peace than offering nothing. In other words, since the Palestinians are uninterested in peace, no offer of any sort will produce peace, and therefore they should be offered nothing at all. Q: What is the best way to pursue a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict? A: By abandoning all attempts to pursue a solution. The pursuit of "solutions" has been the root of all evil in the Middle East these past two decades. Israel should stop looking for solutions and instead pursue military victory. Q: Do you seriously want Israel to send troops back into Gaza after the redeployment by Sharon and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza? A: Yes, of course. It was obvious at the time of the Israeli unilateral withdrawal that military reoccupation of Gaza was only a matter of time, inevitable and necessary. The sooner it is done, the better. Q: Doesn't Israeli occupation cause terrorism? A: No, removal of Israeli occupation causes terrorism. Q: What should Israel offer Syria? A: The right to retain Damascus and other Syrian territory east of the Golan Heights in exchange for Syria's abandoning its demands for the "return" of the Golan Heights. Q: Do you seriously expect Syria to agree to that? A: No. Q: How should Israel deal with terrorism? A: First and foremost, by recognizing that there is no NON-MILITARY solution to the problems of terrorism. Q: What should Israel do with terrorists? A: Summarily execute them without trial whenever they are captured while engaged in violence. Capital punishment should be instituted for all other terrorists. Q: How should Israel deal with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad? A: By killing as many of their members as it can. Q: What is the best strategy Israel can adopt with regard to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank? A: R&D, or Reoccupation and De-nazification. Q: How should Israel deal with the Qassam rockets? A: By R&D, or Reoccupation and De-nazification. There is no way the Qassams will be halted through "talks." They can only be halted by Israel's reestablishment of complete military control over the Gaza Strip. Q: Should Israel return Jewish settlers to Gush Katif in Gaza? A: Yes, of course. Q: What should Israel do about settlements on the West Bank? A: Build more of them. It's the best way to take Palestinian statehood off the table once and for all. In any future deal based on "limited autonomy" – which was of course the original concept Israel accepted at Camp David – "settlements" will represent no impediment at all to implementation. Q: How should Israel deal with Hezb'Allah? A: By helping to resolve the parking congestion problems in the towns and villages of southern Lebanon that are strongholds of Hezb'Allah and loyal to it. That is, by constructing large new parking lots there. Q: How should Israel deal with domestic Arab radicals? A: Israeli Arabs openly identifying with the enemies of Israel or endorsing terrorism should be stripped of their Israeli citizenship and deported. All Arabs sitting in the parliament, working as senior civil servants or as judges must be required to take an oath of allegiance, on a sacred book of their religion, to Israel as a Zionist state. The extended families of any Arabs involved in terrorism or anti-Jewish violence should be deported and their property seized. Q: What about the Temple Mount? A: The PLO must be completely stripped of control over it. Q. How can "hope for peace" be created in the Middle East? A: By eliminating all hopes among the Arabs that they will destroy Israel.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/bernie-madoffs-ben-gurion-university-connection/
Bernie Madoff's Ben Gurion University Connection Posted By Steven Plaut On February 7, 2013 (Open web page for links) Ben Gurion University in Israel is probably best known for being home to many of the worst far-leftist anti-Israel radical faculty members in the country, people like Neve Gordon, Oren Yiftachel, and David Newman. While it has some serious scholars, mainly in the sciences and engineering, the social sciences and humanities departments there are by and large centers for leftist indoctrination and anti-Israel agitprop. The entire Department of Politics consists of anti-Israel extremists, and its academic standards are so pathetically low that an international panel of experts recently called for shutting it down altogether. Now it has been learned that the University is also up-to-its-neck involved in the Bernard Madoff mega-scandal. Indeed, it appears that part of the salaries for Neve Gordon and his ilk come from funds stolen by Bernard Madoff from his victims and transferred to BGU. In recent months many details have emerged about the connections between Ben Gurion University and the Madoff scandal. In particular, attention is focusing on the role of Israeli lawyer Yair Green, who currently serves as the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors of Ben Gurion University. BGU was a major beneficiary of donations transferred to it by Green, whose source was money stolen by Madoff. The University has indicated no plans or willingness to return any of the stolen funds. Green is being investigated in the United States and in Israel; he has been indicted in the United States by the court-appointed trustee Irving Picard, who is in charge of unraveling and cleaning up the disaster left over by the Madoff Affair. That Affair involved the largest Ponzi scam in human history, in which losses to investors amounted to more than $50 billion. While Madoff's victims came from across the spectrum, a very large portion of them were Jewish institutions, philanthropies, and individuals. Green is suspected of being involved in several funds with close ties to the Madoff operations, and also operating a "charity fund" in Israel that made donations to Israeli universities and other institutions using funds stolen by Madoff from his victims. Bernard Madoff, it will be recalled, operated a gargantuan Ponzi "investment" scam. A bit like chain letters and pyramid schemes, a "Ponzi scheme" is one in which investor funds are basically moved about by the operator from investor to investor to create the delusion of profits being earned, as the operator skims off substantial amounts for himself and his partners. When it collapses, investors lose most or all of their investments. The Madoff scam produced enormous damages and losses, but also produced some beneficiaries, including Green himself and Ben Gurion University. BGU's Green was connected in a number of different ways to the Madoff operations, including as the managing director of the "Magnify" corporation, a shady investment fund registered in Panama. That fund was originally set up by one Albert Igoin, a Romanian-born French banker and financial manager with close ties to Madoff. After serving in the French underground during World War II, Igoin was the right hand man of a French communist party leader. French intelligence believed he operated as a Soviet spy in France. He was under constant surveillance by French counter-intelligence, and the US refused to allow him to enter its borders. At some point Igoin lost interest in Stalinism and instead went into finance. He did exceptionally well. He later teamed up with Madoff back in the 1970s. Igoin was deeply involved in the Madoff operations, and "Magnify" was involved in channeling funds to and from the Madoff "investment house." Green not only ran "Magnify," but also some other funds or operations in which Ingoin was involved, including Primero and Strand, based in the Virgin Islands. In 1988 Green set up with Igoin the so-called Yeshaya Horowitz Association, which funded applied research projects in Israel. It is named after an 18th century kabbalist and Rabbi. Its stated purpose was to channel donations to Israeli universities, hospitals and other institutions. Before the scandal, the Horowitz Association had raised between 100 and 200 million dollars, mainly for Israeli universities. Press reports claimed that it lost $800 million in the collapse of Madoff's scheme, although all or almost all of those funds were simply money siphoned off to it from Madoff, not trading profits or investment earnings. Green was also the direct beneficiary of funds handled by his operations, including a payment of over three million dollars from the "Magnify" fund. Green's children also received cash "gifts." Green claimed that some of these came from the daughter of Albert Igouin, who now lives in Europe. But when contacted by Israel's Channel Ten, she denied even knowing who Green is or having met him. Igoin himself died in 1995. Green began raising funds for Ben Gurion University while the Madoff scheme grew. In exchange, he was first granted an honorary PhD by the University and later appointed chairman of the executive committee of the University's Board of Governors by its leftist President Rivka Carmi, a post he still fills. Green also developed political ties with Israeli politicians, especially from the Left. He has close ties with Israeli President Shimon Peres and with assorted Labor Party activists and leaders, including Avishai Braverman, past president of BGU. The Labor Party's one-time Minister of Education Yuli Tamir appointed Green to sit in the country's Council on Higher Education. Peres received funds from Green and granted him honors in exchange. Ben Gurion University was not the only beneficiary of Green's activities. So was the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Among the members of the board of the Horowitz Association, overseeing the distribution of funds, was Professor Hanoch Gutfreund, the ex-President of the Hebrew University (who is also on the international board of the far-leftist "New Israel Fund"). The Horowitz Association made large contributions to the "President's Assembly" run by Israeli President Shimon Peres. The Green-Madoff connections were exposed in a special television exposé a few months back on Israel's Channel Ten in its "Hamakor" documentary, a show roughly analogous to "60 Minutes" in the US. Channel Ten and the Nana news web site claim that Yair Green siphoned off millions of dollars in money scammed by Madoff from his victims, suggesting that this was some sort of hush money to hold his tongue about Madoff's behavior. He held repeated face-to-face meetings with Madoff. Green had registered his Horowitz Association as a non-profit institution in Israel. When the registrar for non-profits demanded to know what the source was for the funds that Green was conveying to recipients in Israel, Green refused to answer, claiming the donor had required anonymity. It turned out that the only source of the funds was the Madoff "investment house." Channel Ten claims Green received $3.15 million to his own bank account in 2002 from Magnify (in addition to other payments received). In 2005 each of Green's children received a payment of $100,000 from "Magnify." Green claims the millions were fees due him for legal services. After a trustee was appointed to handle the cleanup of the financial mess left behind by the collapse of the Madoff scheme, the trustee filed a suit this past summer (on June 15, 2012) against a group of defendants, including both Green and the Horowitz Association regarding jurisdiction, and the petition was granted. Picard insists that Green and Madoff had an unusually close and warm personal relationship. The suit charges that Green was among those who received large amounts of payouts from the Madoff fund, funds that had in effect been stolen from Madoff's victims and were siphoned off to Green (and other defendants). One of the defendants was the "Magnify Corporation." The suit went on to charge this: According to the Trustee, "Green and/or Brunner exercised control" over the Accountholder Defendants' accounts. Further, "Green and Brunner had virtually unfettered discretion to manipulate the Accountholder Defendants' accounts," and they "exploited their relationships with Madoff" to do so. Allegedly taking advantage of that power, "Green and Brunner . . . funneled millions of dollars of other people's money . . . to themselves, their families, Yeshaya, other charitable institutions throughout Israel, and other individuals and entities being investigated by the Trustee around the world." The suit charges that group of funds run by Green and Brunner "was inconsistent with legitimate trading activity," as these accounts were rife with "indicia of irregularity." Allegedly ignoring these indicia of irregularity, Brunner and Green exercised control over the entities' accounts "to siphon money from BLMIS for the benefit of the Defendants, particularly Yeshaya, as well as their family members and various Israeli institutions." ' In spite of his role in the Madoff affair, Green continues to attempt to raise funds for Israeli institutions. And especially for Ben Gurion University. Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/bernie-madoffs-ben-gurion-university-connection/ ***** If you would like to demand that Ben Gurion University return all the stolen funds it received out of the Madoff Affair, then please write to The Council for Higher Education in Israel (governmental body that funds and supervises Israeli universities and colleges) Prof. Manuel Trachtenberg Chairman, Council on Higher Education Email: manuel@post.tau.ac.il POB 4037, Jerusalem 91040, Israel Aharon Beit-Halahmi Planning & Budgeting Committee Chairman Council for Higher Education Email: betha@eurofund.co.il P.O.B. 4037, Jerusalem 91040, Israel Tel: 02-5679911 Fax: 02-5679969 E-mail: info@che.org.il Ministry of Education The Honorable Gideon Sa'ar Acting Minister of Education Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports Kiryat Ben Gurion, Jerusalem Email: gsaar@knesset.gov.il Additional Email: sar@education.gov.il Phone: 972-2-6408131 Fax: 972-2-6753525 Shalomit Amichai Director General of the Ministry of Education Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports Kiryat Ben Gurion, Jerusalem Email: mankal@education.gov.il Monday, February 04, 2013
1. Shlomo Gazit is a far leftist ex-general who was one of the first
presidents of Ben Gurion University. In fact, he was a key figure in turning Ben Gurion University into the cesspool of tenured treason and leftist extremism that it is today. Gazit has an Op-Ed in Haaretz today (in Hebrew at http://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/1.1921159 ) in which he calls for arming the Hezb'Allah terrorists in Lebanon. As you know, a few days ago Israel blasted to smithereens a convey that was bring new advanced missiles into Lebanon from Syria for use by the Hezb'Allah. Gazit is aghast. How dare Israel defend itself! Besides, Assad is such a villain, opines Gazit, that better his weaponry be in the hands of anyone else rather than Syria, I guess including Al-Qaeda but certainly including Hezb'Allah. Gazit was once upon a time head of Israeli military intelligence, and the fact that such a moron held such a position explains better than anything else the failures of military intelligence over the years. When "Oslo" began, Gazit was one of the first to proclaim the advent of the New Middle East and the permanent tranquility that would follow the Beilin initiative. He has also long been a leader in leftwing fascism and McCarthyist assaults against freedom of speech for non-leftists in Israel (see http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/shut-down-the-universities-1.309645 ). 2. Daniel Pipes maintains a running blog page in which he documents cases of poetic justice and "instant retribution" in the Middle East, mainly about Arabs blowing themselves up while trying to murder Jews and things along similar lines. The page is here: http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009/01/instant-retribution-in-the-middle-east#Fatah . If you have not read it, it will make your day. But I think I may have one story of my own of the same caliber! For those of you who do not think that there is a Higher Intelligence with a terrific sense of humor in charge of the universe, you will have trouble explaining the most delightful development of the week in Israel, the decision by convicted spy Anat Kamm to sue the gotkes off of Haaretz! As you recall, Kamm was convicted of stealing oodles of classified documents from the army and passing them on to the Haaretz reporter Uri Blau, who leaked them. Both Blau and Kamm are ultra leftists. Well, as reported here http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/anat-kamm-demands-nis-2-million-from-haaretz-for-exposing-her.premium-1.501251 Haaretz is facing suit for 2 million shekels. Remember that old shtick about "Da Devil made me do it"? Well, Kamm claims Haaretz tricked and tempted her into the espionage. Blau, by the way, got off with a wrist slap and Kamm was released early from house arrest thanks to her good behavior. According to the story in Haaretz: Anat Kamm, who is serving three and a half years in prison for leaking hundreds of classified documents to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau, has asked the newspaper for NIS 2 million in compensation. Kamm says the newspaper's actions caused her great harm. In a letter sent by Kamm's lawyer Ilan Bombach to Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken a week and a half ago, Bombach wrote: "Kamm views you and some of the newspaper's employees as directly responsible, or indirectly, for revealing [her] as the source. This exposure caused my client enormous damage," he wrote. For two years Kamm was held under full house arrest and her arrest cut short her budding career as a journalist for the Walla website as well as her academic studies, said Bombach. Attorneys for Haaretz stated: "We have received the letter. It seems the claims [in the letter] have no real basis." Kamm passed the documents to Blau on a disk-on-key, which she had taken from the office of then-head of the IDF's Central Command, Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh. "She asked [Blau] as a condition for passing on the documents that he never disclose where they came from," stated the letter. Kamm was seriously harmed because Haaretz did not protect her as a source, stated Bombach. If Kamm does not receive the NIS 2 million as a compromise amount, she will take the matter to court, warned her lawyer. 3. Oh a group of Syrian hackers broke into the Haaretz web site and sabotaged it, introducing all sorts of anti-Israel and pro-terror items. See http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/syria-strikes-back-hackers-break-into-haaretz-emails-threaten-more-attacks.premium-1.500937 . The mystery of course is how this was detected because the content of the newspaper did not change at all. I have investigated and have discovered that the only clear indication that Syrian hackers had replaced the regular management of Haaretz was that all the newspaper recipes for pork chops were deleted! 4. In his column from February 1, 2013, Maariv deputy editor Ben Dror Yemini attacks some Israeli tenured leftists for their campaigns to paint Israel as a Nazi regime. After reminding readers of the many attempts by the Eurotrash to describe Israel as the successor state to Nazi Germany, Yemini focuses on the behavior of Ariella Azoulay, the "professor" wife of Tel Aviv University professor Adi Ophir. The two devote their lives to demonizing Israel. (See http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Alon%20Ben%20Shaul%20-%20Adi%20Ophir%20and%20Ariella%20Azoulay%20-%20The%20Defaming%20Duo.htm ) Azoulay was denied tenure at Bar Ilan University, since her entire "academic career" consisted of churning out books of tendentious photos doctored and manipulated to make Israel look oppressive and evil. (Never any photos of any Jewish victims of Arab barbarism of course.) Well, Azoulay and Ophir were among a group of far-leftists hired by the German-funded far-leftist Minerva Institute, which operates at Tel Aviv University. They produced a "report," which - naturally - concludes that Israeli soldiers behave like Nazis. (In Hebrew, see story http://www.nrg.co.il/app/index.php?do=blog&encr_id=f2b4c1b55be76d1e6d7b777256ea0370&id=4297 ) When she was denied tenure at Bar Ilan, the usual radical leftist academics all organized a petition denouncing Bar Ilan as a fascist intolerant anti-democratic institution because it refused to grant tenure to Azoulay for the petty reason that she has no academic publications (see http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Steve%20Plaut%20-%20Israeli%20Tenured%20Taliban.htm ). Oh and speaking of Pipesian poetic justice, you will love this story about Azoulay: http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Ariella%20Azoulay%20-%20jilted.htm 5. In his biography of Stalin, Oxford University don Robert Conquest provides the following quote from Stalin. As you probably know, when the Red Army entered non-Soviet countries (before converting them to Soviet colonies), the soldiers typically went on rape rampages. Not just in Germany. In Berlin nearly every human in the city with two X chromosomes was raped by the Soviet soldiers. When asked about this, Stalin replied that the Soviet Union was more in need of military victories than of virginities. (page 266) Now in recent years the Radical Israeli Left has been going through all sorts of ideological contortions to make excuses for the many cases of sexual molestation and rape of Western supporters by Palestinians (see http://frontpagemag.com/2011/steven-plaut/how-supporters-of-palestinian-terrorism-are-murdered-and-raped-by-their-palestinian-sponsors/ ). These are women who come to the West Bank to help support Palestinian terrorism but find themselves manhandled, and I do not mean mere groping. The Left has been holding debates over whether to speak out about all that. The dominant ideological position though seems to be that Palestinian "resistance" comes before demands for decency in behavior towards the fairer sex. So in other words, the Israeli Left is pretty much saying the same thing that Stalin said. Military victory (overt the Jews) is more important than virginities! 6. Architecting Hate: http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20LondonU%20-%20Eyal%20Weizman%20-%20Agitprop%20Constructed%20on%20Hate.htm Friday, February 01, 2013
1. A Lesson in Torat Moshe (a little early for Purim):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tciT9bmCMq8 2. You probably have heard that a UN commission has issued a "report" claiming that Israel's building settlements is a crime and sanctions must be implemented against Israel. The "report" was written by Richard Falk for the UN. It is worth reminding readers just who and what Falk is http://frontpagemag.com/2009/steven-plaut/collaborators-in-the-war-against-the-jews-richard-a-falk-by-steven-plaut/ (from 2009) Collaborators in the War Against the Jews: Richard A. Falk – by Steven Plaut Posted By Steven Plaut On December 4, 2009 It is a bit of a shame that Richard A. Falk, professor emeritus of International Law and Practice from Princeton, cannot go back in time in some sort of time machine to right historic wrongs. If he could, there is no doubt at all that he would revise and re-orchestrate the Nuremberg Trials conducted by the Allies after World War II so that the leaders of the United States and Britain were the ones indicted instead. After all, from 1945 onwards the Allies were guilty of "occupation." Earlier, they had even dared to use military force against German terrorism, had caused German civilian deaths in their earlier military incursions and air bombing campaigns, and then illegally colonized German territories. If it were up to Falk, the Nuremberg trials would have been devoted to prosecuting the Jews of Europe for causing so much trouble for those poor innocent Germans. Falk is not only one of the worst collaborators in the academic wars against the Jews, he is also America's leading practitioner of the Orwellian inversion. For Falk, America is a fascist monstrosity, while the world's fascist and totalitarian monstrosities are democratic enclaves of freedom. For him, Israel is a terrorist aggressor, while the Arab terrorist aggressors are innocent victims and peace-loving progressives. For him, Israel is a Nazi-like country seeking genocide, while the genocidal Islamofascists of the Hamas and their backers are merely protesters against social inequality inside Israel. For him, terrorist aggression against Jews is really the pursuit of peace, while self-defense by Israel is criminal, terrorist aggression and genocide. So who exactly is Richard Falk? He is basically an Ivy League version of Ward Churchill. He has described himself as an "assimilationist Jewish with a virtual denial of even the ethnic side of Jewishness." According to Martin Peretz of the New Republic, "Yes, let me assure you, this hater of Israel is a Jew. And, also yes, this hater of America is an American. " Falk's only interest in his Jewish origins is when he can use them as a bludgeon against Israel and other Jews. According to one report, Falk may have converted to the Baha'i religion. Falk's wife is a Turkish Moslem. And just what is Falk's agenda? When addressing an audience of supporters of the anti-Israel organization "Sabeel," Falk thus spoke: "During a question and answer period after remarks by Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, an audience member urged people to 'vote the Jewish state out of existence.' Enthusiastic applause erupted up and down the pews." For Falk, it goes without saying that Israel must be annihilated. He cannot imagine any form of Middle East "peace" in which the Jews have not been driven into the sea. In his words, "If we are to re-imagine peace, we have to stop thinking of the conventional two-state solution, this idea of two people living in separate states would be a disaster." But there is so much more! Falk is a conspiracy nut who is involved up to his hairline in the "911 Truth" conspiracy cult, which claims that the Bush Administration was actually behind the 911 attacks on the US. Falk has repeated over and over his "suspicion" that high American officials, conniving with nefarious Jewish neo-conservatives, were the real culprits who organized the attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon. Falk wrote a sycophantic foreword for a conspiracy "book" by one David Ray Griffin, "The New Pearl Harbor." Falk championed that "book" and helped get it a publisher. Here is Falk's take on 911: "As far as I can tell, the real explanation is a widely shared fear of what sinister forces might lay beneath the unturned stones of a full and honest investigation of 9/11. Ever since the assassinations in the 1960s of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X there has been waged a powerful campaign against 'conspiracy theory' that has made anyone who dares question the official story to be branded as a kook or some kind of unhinged troublemaker. In this climate of opinion, any political candidate for high office who dared raise doubts about the official version of 9/11 would immediately be branded as unfit, and would lose all political credibility. It is impossible to compete in any public arena in the United States if a person comes across as a '9/11 doubter.'" Writing a in the Middle East Quarterly (Winter 2002), "Professors of Palestine," Martin Kramer observed that "extracting…ex cathedra rulings from Falk is easy business." Kramer added: "I hadn't seen Falk's authority invoked so reverentially since my own student days at Princeton. Back then, he was the leading campus enthusiast of the Ayatollah Khomeini. 'The depiction of Khomeini as fanatical, reactionary, and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false,' he wrote in 1979. 'Iran may yet provide us with a desperately-needed model of humane government for a third-world country.' I well recall watching him preside over a 'teach-in' in support of the revolution, which was going to end human rights abuses in Iran. And I recall student groupies applauding fanatically, as if in a trance." Falk's publication record is a one-sided indictment of everything Western and a one-sided exoneration of everything anti-Western. He was an early sycophant of the Ayatollah Khomeini, publishing in the New York Times on February 16, 1979 a piece titles "Trusting Khomeini." The New Republic claims Falk considered the Ayatollah to be the Messiah. Falk also was a cheerleader for the Khmer Rouge. He regularly writes for viciously anti-American and anti-Semitic web sites such as "Counterpunch" and "Znet." Kramer adds, "Falk is famous for his one-size-fits-all definition of war crimes and crimes against humanity." So, "in 1998…he warned officials responsible for implementing the United Nations sanctions against Iraq of their 'criminal accountability for complicity in the commission of crimes against humanity.' The persistence of American leaders in carrying out the sanctions regime 'subjects them to potential criminal responsibility.'" Naturally, Falk also sees conspiracies being perpetrated by Neo-conservatives (meaning Jews) against far-leftist academics. He opines: "There's no doubt that there's a concerted right-wing attempt to intimidate professors who advocate critical views, especially on Middle East issues and on the Bush presidency." To drive home his point, he served as a cheerleader and apologist for Ward Churchill when the latter dismissed the American victims of 9-11 as "little Eichmanns." Falk has been ferociously opposed to the Allied liberation of Iraq. He described the invasion as a "war of aggression" by the United States and its allies, and – naturally – also compares it to the crimes of German Nazis in World War II. Orwellian inversions involving Nazis are Falk's favorite metaphor, and he seems to compose several before breakfast each day. Elsewhere he has stated, "It is not an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with the criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity." He compared Attorney General like John Ashcroft to the Nazi conspirators who set the Reichstag on fire. Falk dismisses the Domestic Security Enhancement Act and the Patriot Act as "sweeping powers" that represent a "slide toward fascism." He routinely denounces America for being an imperialist power, an empire. In 2003 he published a diatribe, "Will the Empire be Fascist?" There he insists that terror warnings and threat assessments are tools used by the American government to frighten and control the public. He has demanded that American sovereignty be constricted and subjected to a "Global Peoples' Assembly," a governing body whose members would "represent the worldwide voice of the people in action and decision making." You know, people like Hugo Chavez and Muammar Khaddafi, who would decide there what America can and cannot do. But Falk's special animosity is reserved for Israel. He has been trying for decades to get Israel obliterated. And that track record qualified him to serve as the special investigator into "Israeli war crimes" on behalf of the United Nations! In 2007 Falk published, "Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust," in which he wrote that it was not an "irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians (by Israel)" with the "criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity." His title is a thin plagiarism of the title of a book by Robert Bork, "Slouching Towards Gemorrah." The article may be Falk's most openly anti-Semite diatribe. In it, he accuses Israel of mistreating Palestinians on a scale comparable to the Nazi extermination of Jews. He writes: "Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy. If ever the ethos of 'a responsibility to protect,' recently adopted by the UN Security Council as the basis of 'humanitarian intervention' is applicable, it would be to act now to start protecting the people of Gaza from further pain and suffering." Falk then went on to argue that the plight of the Palestinians is worse than the victims of genocide in Rwanda: "But Gaza is morally far worse (than Rwanda), although mass death has not yet resulted." That single sentence may be the most telling of all the inanities Falk has ever invented. Jonathan Kay, writing in the Canadian National Post, dismissed Falk as an anti-Jewish bigot and as "an anti-Israel hit man:" "Falk accuses Israel of having 'genocidal tendencies,' and calls the international response to the situation in Gaza "morally far worse" than its response to the 1994 Rwanda genocide (death toll: 800,000) and Srebrenica — despite the fact that there is not a single recorded instance of Israel implementing a program of deliberately killing civilians in Gaza, let alone mass murder." The article concludes by declaring, "To persist with [Israeli policies] is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole. It is this prospect that makes appropriate the warning of a Palestinian holocaust in the making, and should remind the world of the famous post-Nazi pledge of 'never again.' What a scandal to imagine that this ignorant ideologue is the expert in whom the UNHRC has entrusted its fact-finding in Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, notwithstanding his shrill opinions, Falk clearly doesn't actually know anything about Gaza and West Bank." No, Falk is not beneath commandeering every iota of Jewish suffering in history to demonize Israel, even the "Never Again" slogan coined following the Holocaust in World War II. There is almost no distortion of the truth that Falk will not embrace when he jihads against Israel. He defends the "election" of the Hamas in Gaza as a "fair election." His evidence? Jimmy Carter said so. He deliberately inverts history in the worst Orwellian manner. The Hamas has been seeking ceasefires with Israel, but Israel keeps violating them, according to the learned oprofessor. Israel and the US are all to blame for the rise of Hamas hegemony in Gaza, opines Falk, because Israel failed to capitulate sufficiently to the heads of the PLO and the US failed to coerce Israel to do so: "This latest turn in policy needs to be understood in the wider context of the Israeli refusal to reach a reasonable compromise with the Palestinian people since 1967." The reasonable compromise the Palestinians demand of course is Israel's complete extermination. In 2001, when he retired from Princeton, the misnamed U.N. Commission on Human Rights decided to send a biased "commission of inquiry" to bash Israel over its supposed violation of human rights. Falk was one of three members chosen. The other two were also anti-Israel: John Dugard, a South African from Leiden University in the Netherlands who considers Israel a racist apartheid-like regime, and Kamal Hussein, former Bangladeshi foreign minister. Alan Dershowitz dismissed Falk as a bigot and as someone who made up his mind long before he began any "investigation." In Dershowitz' view, appointing Falk is comparable to the following: "Imagine the UN appointing David Duke to report on how Blacks are victimizing Whites, or Hugo Chavez to report on American foreign policy, or Mohammad Ahmadinejad to investigate whether the Holocaust occurred." In 2008 the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) officially appointed Falk to a six-year term as a "United Nations Special Rapporteur" on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967." I guess Noam Chomsky wasn't available. US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton explained why Falk was selected: "He was picked for a reason, and the reason is not to have an objective assessment — the objective is to find more ammunition to go after Israel." This new commission reached its conclusions long before it was even convened. In Falk's words, the purpose of the commission was this: "The central issue is to ask whether Israel has used excessive force in responding to the Palestinian political demonstrations." Note that he and his sidekicks had no interest in the countless terrorist atrocities and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians launched by Palestinians. In fact, Falk essentially came out in favor of Palestinian terrorism even before the commission began its work: "One is evaluating whether the conditions of occupation are such as to give the Palestinians some kind of right of resistance. And if they have that right, then what are the limits to that right?" The only difference between terrorism and "resistance" depends entirely on whether on not Falk endorses it. Falk used the same opportunity to denounce Israel as a colonialist entity. In May, 2008, and recalling his early campaigns against Israel on behalf of the UN, Israel refused to allow Falk to enter the country at all as a UN representative. He tried to enter again in December, was detained for 30 hours in Tel Aviv airport and then given the bum's rush out. Falk joined the tiny club of anti-Semites so extreme that Israel refuses to allow them to enter the country. Of "academics" barred from entering Israel, Falk shares that honor only with Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein, who was evicted from Israel thanks to Finkelstein's intimate ties to the Hezb'Allah terrorists. (Even Noam Chomsky and numerous other blatant anti-Semites enter Israel all the time with no problem, and many lecture at Israeli universities. Israel only evicts the worst collaborators with terrorism!) When Falk was evicted, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior explicitly cited Falk's long record of anti-Israel hate propaganda in its decision to ban his entry. Simona Halperin, the director of Israel's International Organization and Human Rights department, called Falk "completely unobjective," citing his comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of Israel's actions against the Palestinians to the Holocaust. Writing in the Israeli daily Maariv, Uri Yablonka commented on the expulsion of Falk: "It is not every day that the Foreign Ministry decides to ban a senior United Nations emissary from entering Israel, especially when the person involved is a Jewish academic. But in the case of Prof. Richard Falk from the United States, Israel made an exception. This was because in the past Falk voiced support for suicide attacks and compared Israel's activity with that of the Nazis." The editor of Maariv dismissed Falk as a repulsive maniac. When Israel launched its anti-terror campaign in Gaza in 2008, "Cast Lead," Falk repeatedly and mechanically denounced all Israeli defense operations as "war crimes." Evidently the only form of Jewish self-defense against Hamas rockets that Falk is willing to approve is total capitulation. Even grabbing ships full of arms bound for Islamofascist terrorists is "criminal," according to Falk, and an abuse of Palestinian rights. He repeatedly called for Nuremberg-style indictments of Israeli leaders for "war crimes." Falk is not above outright falsification when it comes to his prettifying the Hamas or demonizing Israel. As for Falk's other political associations, Kathy Shaidle lists some of these: "Falk is a prominent member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, which the CIA once characterized as 'one of the most useful Communist front organizations at the service of the Soviet Communist Party.' Today Falk chairs the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, whose recommended strategy for combating terrorism is to increase U.S. aid to those countries that act as a breeding ground for terrorists." The New Republic's Martin Peretz insists that he "finds human rights abuses Right and Left but on second thought only Right." Kathie Shaidle sums Falk up thus: "Were Falk simply an obscure crank, his views about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 could be written off as the rantings of a sadly delusional individual. However, Falk's enthusiasm for conspiracy theories casts grave doubts about the levels of objectivity and competence he will bring to his new 'investigative' position at the United Nations. Unlike the scientific method or other rational methods of deduction, conspiracy theories work backwards from frequently tenuous 'evidence,' in order to 'prove' the conspiracist's pre-determined theories. Richard Falk publicly has sided with radical Islam over America and Israel for three decades, with little consideration for facts and evidence. Given that, and his gullible support for bizarre 9/11 'revelations,' critics have good reason to suspect that, as a UN 'investigator,' Falk will leave a great deal to be desired." As the Hamas' point man serving the UN commission, Falk did indeed deliver the goods, as expected.
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