Steven Plaut |
Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university. |
Sunday, March 31, 2013
The PC Make-Over of Passover By: Steven Plaut Monday, April 05, 2004 The Jewish Left distorts the meaning of a sacred Jewish holiday. In recent years, Passover has undergone a make-over in the American Jewish non-Orthodox community, one that has converted it largely into a holiday devoted to celebrating human rights, protesting a long list of human rights abuses and promoting fashionable causes. The remake seems designed to make Passover a cosmopolitan holiday, one with a universal message in which all can join, in essence the Jewish answer to the Declaration of the Rights of Man of the French Revolution. While all of the above involve the Almighty's decision to violate the legitimate human rights of the Egyptian people, human rights abuses in the Passover story are not restricted to the divine. The Jewish slaves, before taking to the road, also take away the wealth and savings of the Egyptian people. While Pharaoh no doubt owed them some back wages, this wealth was in essence being taken from the innocent Ordinary Egyptians, and not necessarily only from the yuppie upper classes. Friday, March 29, 2013
Hanan Ashrawi has long been the favorite "moderate" of the
Bash-Israel Left. In spite of her reptilian face, making her something of a Hananosaurus, she speaks a decent English, which is unusual among the terrorists. And there is a well-entrenched Western belief that any terrorist who speaks English properly must be a moderate. After all, surely extremists could never learn to speak English! Every time a Western media outlet or campus leftist needs to show Paletsinian moderation, they invariably point to Ashrawi. Ashrawi herself is about as moderate as Osama bin Laden or Noam Chomskly. Let us note that Chomsky also speaks English ok. You can see an earlier expose of Ashrawi here: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1093. Note her track record in Holocaust Denial: 'Ashrawi has long been a Holocaust denier. In the July 2, 1998 edition of the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, she published an article calling the Holocaust "a deceitful myth which the Jews have … exploited to get sympathy."' Well, now that she has recovered from Dorothy's house landing on top of her in the cyclone, Ashrawi is back, and this time she is doing a better job of illustrating Palestinian "moderation" then she ever did before. She is the perfect demonstration of all of the success of Oslo and the "peace process." http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/03/28/plo-official-hanan-ashrawis-ngo-publishes-passover-blood-libel/ PLO Official Hanan Ashrawi's NGO Publishes Passover Blood Libel MARCH 28, 2013 11:17 AM Author: Zach Pontz Hanan Ashrawi. Photo: wiki commons. MIFTAH, an NGO whose founder PLO Official Hanan Ashrawi is a well known media personality in the West, and which receives funding from the UN and the Ford Foundation, published an article to its website Wednesday that claimed Jews use the blood of Christians for Passover rituals. Anonymous pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon spotted this passage in an article by Nawaf al-Zaru on MIFTAH's Arabic-language site (bold courtesy of EoZ): "Does Obama in fact know the relationship, for example, between "Passover" and "Christian blood" ..?!Or "Passover" and "Jewish blood rituals..?!Much of the chatter and gossip about historical Jewish blood rituals in Europe are real and not fake as they claim; the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover …" Al-Zaru was responding to this section of U.S. President Barack Obama's speech to students in Jerusalem last Thursday: "I also know that I come to Israel on the eve of a sacred holiday – the celebration of Passover. And that is where I would like to begin today. Just a few days from now, Jews here in Israel and around the world will sit with family and friends at the Seder table, and celebrate with songs, wine and symbolic foods. After enjoying Seders with family and friends in Chicago and on the campaign trail, I'm proud to have brought this tradition into the White House. I did so because I wanted my daughters to experience the Haggadah, and the story at the center of Passover that makes this time of year so powerful. "It is a story of centuries of slavery, and years of wandering in the desert; a story of perseverance amidst persecution, and faith in God and the Torah. It is a story about finding freedom in your own land. For the Jewish people, this story is central to who you have become." According to Elder of Ziyon, al-Zaru also quotes "a 2007 Haaretz article on a book by a Bar-Ilan University professor that bizarrely claimed that a few blood libels could have had a basis in fact, without noting that the same professor recanted those claims a year later." When reached on the phone by The Algemeiner a MIFTAH employee had no comment on the article. After The Algemeiner emailed the organization the article was removed from MIFTAH's website. It was never published to MIFTAH's English-language webpage. Monday, March 25, 2013
One of the best Country-Western songs that is still (or once again)
popular these days is the version by Susie Bogguss of "I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart." You should take a listen to it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrqoJCR-R-Q. It is actually a remake of an old song from the 30s or 40s by a cowgirl singer named Patsy Montana. You can read the original lyrics here: http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/I-Want-To-Be-A-Cowboy's-Sweetheart-lyrics-LeAnn-Rimes/AE083DE53F0DFA7A48256EEF000F9CA7 Well, I thought I would compose my own 2013 version of the tune, which really is not complete without the yodeling. So here it is. You might want to include it in the last segment of your Passover Seder: I Want to Be a Settler's Sweetheart I want to be a settler's sweetheart I want to learn to shoot and to ride I want to ride o'er the hills and the deserts Out east of that old Green Line I want to hear the leftists howlin' While the sun sinks in the West I want to be a settler's sweetheart That's the life I love the best (Yodeling Interlude) I want to ride my Jeep goin' at a run I want to feel the wind in my face Far off from them Tel Aviv lights Lots of Samarian space I want to slap an anarchist's puss Flipping em birds from Ariel above I want to shoot my M16, Od'da'le ee hee Oh that's the life that I love (Yodeling Interlude) I want to be a settler's sweetheart I want to learn to shoot and to ride I want to ride o'er the hills and the deserts Out east of that old Green Line I want to hear the leftists howlin' While the sun sinks in the West I want to be a settler's sweetheart That's the life I love the best (Yodeling Interlude)
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The Illegal Occupation That Must End By: Steven Plaut Date: Wednesday, July 14 2010 Famagusta, Cyprus: The ghost town lies near the very center of the city, just outside the Venetian walls. It is home only to snakes, scorpions, and rats of a hundred varieties. Signs on the fences around the ghost town show armed Turkish soldiers threatening those taking photographs with arrest or worse. The crumbling buildings inside the perimeter are frozen in time in 1974, as if in an episode of "The Twilight Zone." Nothing has changed since central Famagusta was converted into a ghost town - called Varosha - by the invaders. It is said that the car distributorships in the ghost town even today are stocked with vintage 1974 models. For years after the rape of Famagusta, people told of seeing light bulbs still burning in the windows of the abandoned buildings. Hollywood studios could clothe whole movie sets with the 1974 fashions still in the closets of the homes. Three years after the invasion, the scene was described by Swedish journalist Jan-Olof Bengtsson: "The asphalt on the roads has cracked in the warm sun and along the sidewalks bushes are growing. Today - September 1977 - the breakfast tables are still set, the laundry still hanging and the lamps still burning. Varosha is a ghost town." The Turks currently at the forefront of the assault against Israel for its "illegal occupation" of its own Jewish homeland, and for supposedly mistreating Palestinians, are the very same people who continue the massive crime against humanity in the form of the Famagusta ghost town. Born in ethnic cleansing, it is the enduring testimony to the illegal land grab on Cyprus by Turkey, the mass expulsion of the ethnic Greek Cypriots from the northern 40 percent of the island, the theft of their property, and an unknown number of murders of Greek Cypriots by Turkey. The illegal "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" is recognized by not a single country besides Turkey itself. Since its brutal invasion, Turkey has moved countless thousands of its citizens/troops onto northern Cyprus. This is the same Turkey that venomously denounces Israel when it builds "settlements" in the suburbs of Jerusalem for Jewish civilians on lands they have purchased legally. Famagusta was first erected in the 13th century BCE. Phoenicians came and went, as did the Assyrians and Persians. Greek settlers came to dominate its population. Some Jews migrated in from their homeland, producing the wine used in the Jerusalem Temple described in the Talmud, and later learning to manufacture silk. The Venetians gave the center of Famagusta its defining character, with its massive defensive bulwarks, gates and towers. Shakespeare's mythical Othello served as ruler of Famagusta, and the largest Venetian fortress in the wall is obligingly called Othello's Tower even today. In 1571 the Ottoman Turks took control, relinquishing control to Great Britain in 1878. After an armed campaign by Cypriots, the Brits left in 1958 and Cyprus became a republic. Things were not well, however, in the inter-communal relations between Cypriot Greeks and Cypriot Turks. Atrocities were committed by both sides. After a particularly horrific set of attacks, and partly in response to attempts by some radical Greek nationalists on the island to seek amalgamation with Greece, the Turks invaded the island in the summer of 1974. Within two days they had taken Famagusta. The Turkish air force bombed the helpless town. The entire Greek population, fearing massacres at the hands of the invaders, fled south. Meanwhile, Turkish tanks rolled onward until Turkey had conquered half the Cyprus capital of Nicosia. There it erected a wall running through the center of the city. The apartheid wall of occupation does not attract "solidarity" protesters or leftist professors from the West. They are too busy denouncing and attacking Israel for building a security fence around Jerusalem, a fence to keep the Palestinian suicide bombers from murdering Jewish children. No Rachel Corries go to Nicosia to defy the Turkish occupation army. They know they would instantly be jailed in a typically barbaric Turkish prison. Countless UN resolutions since 1974 have demanded that Turkey leave the island and restore stolen property to Greek Cypriots. The same Turkish government that regularly denounces Israel for daring to defend its civilians from Arab terrorists and for otherwise disregarding anti-Israel world opinion has never paid those UN resolutions any mind. Turkey insists that Palestinians be granted statehood and "self-determination" while refusing to allow Turkish Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Azeris and others to exercise any of it, even in the form of limited language autonomy. While Arabs living in Israel enjoy levels of freedom a hundred times better than do Turks living in Turkey, the Turkish government continues to denounce Israel for its alleged suppression of Arab "human rights." On the very day that Turkey recently murdered 120 Kurds, it denounced Israel for committing "war crimes." Respect for human rights in Turkey is notably absent. The Turkish military police routinely kill civilians. Journalists have been assassinated. Islamofascism is growing stronger and local Islamic fundamentalist terrorists filled the Gaza "peace flotilla" sponsored by Turkey. Those are the terrorists whose suppression by Israel has now become the focus of Turkey's demand for an Israeli apology. When Israel invaded Gaza to put a stop to massive rocket attacks against its civilians by Hamas terrorists, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced Israel for "massacring innocent women and children." He accused Israel of "mass murder" in Gaza, ranting at length about how Israel had turned the Gaza Strip into an "open-air prison." But, in fact, the largest ongoing "open air" human-rights violation and crime against humanity is on display for all to see behind the barbed wire and fences of the ghost town of Famagusta. Sunday, March 24, 2013
Just a fast afterword and followup to the previous item about
Netanyahu's cowardly "apology" to Turkey. Not only did Bibi "apologize" for Israel using force against the genocidal Islamofascist terrorists who attacked Israeli troops, not only did he apologize for using armed force to protect the people of Israel, Netanyahu ALSO agreed to pay reparations to the Turkish families of terrorists killed in the ship deck fighting when the flotilla ship was boarded. The terrorists there attacked the IDF troops who boarded the ship. The Turkish terrorists were killed while attempting to murder Israeli soldiers. That is the basis for Netanyahu offering to pay reparations. Maybe Bibi will next offer to pay the Palestinians compensation for the damages to their Qassam rockets that they shoot into Israel when these are shot down by Israel's iron dome anti-missile system? Bibi's problem is that he needs the Minister of Finance to sign any checks for any reparations payments to the Turkish families of the dead terrorists. So I wanted to suggest that you drop a line to Yair Lapid, the still untested new Minister of Finance but an Israeli claiming to be a proud ZIonist with a sense of Jewish self-respect. Urge him top REFUSE to make any reparations payments to the families of the terrorists. While you are at it, suggest he deduct the amount Netanyahu offered to pay Turkey in reparations from Netanyahu's own salary checks. You can email Lapid at sar@mof.gov.il and fax him at 972-2-5825685
An open letter to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Prime Minister of Turkey Dear Mister Prime Minister: On behalf of all of the people of Israel, I would like to apologize to you for the cowardice and fathomless idiocy of the Prime Minister of Israel. As you know, this weekend Benjamin Netanyahu sent you an "apology" for Israel having defended itself against the genocidal terrorists who attacked Israeli soldiers armed only with paintguns when they boarded the terrorist "flotilla" ship that you sent out to challenge Israel's naval blockade of the Hamas enclave in Gaza. Netanyahu spoke only for himself when he apologized to you for Israel's defending itself and its people, this two generations after the Holocaust. He does not represent anyone at all in the country when it comes to this "apology." No one else in the country, except for some anti-Israel radical leftists with tenure at the universities, agrees that Israel owes you an apology for defending its people. Actually, on behalf of all REAL Israelis, I would like to apologize to you for the fact that ONLY nine terrorists were killed by Israeli troops on the flotilla ship when Israeli soldiers were savagely attacked by Turkish and other terrorists. I would like to apologize for the fact that Israeli did NOT torpedo and sink the terrorist ships trying to break the blockade and bring in aid to the Hamas Nazis. I would like to apologize for the fact that Israel has a Prime Minister who is so clueless, insensitive, and divorced from Jewish history that he would consider buying a few moments of diplomat calm with a Moslem aggressor by shaming his entire country with an "apology" to Turkey, exhibiting one of the most disgraceful acts by a Jew in all of history, and all this just hours before the Jewish holiday of national liberation, Passover. Beyond that, I really do think that Israel owes an apology for NOT having done much more to draw the world's attention to the illegal occupation and destruction by Turkey of the jewel of Cyprus, the city of Famagusta. Israel sat by while Turkey conquered 40% of Cyprus and transferred tens of thousands of its own people as illegal settlers to the island. And for that I apologize. And since you have spent so much time in recent years denouncing Israel as an occupier, I think Israel owes an apology to the world for not helping to end the illegal Turkish occupation of the great ancient Greek capital of Constantinople, now under an illegal Saracen occupation that has continued for far too long. It is high time that Constantinople be returned to its true heritage and its legal owners, the Greek people. It is less than a hundred years since the city, along with Smyrna and other Greek homelands, was almost liberated by the Greeks, who were only to be blocked by the Turkish military aggressors, the mass murderers of the Armenians. So Mister Prime Minister, as you see, I am afraid that Israelis DO owe the world quite a few apologies. On behalf of the non-pusillanimous citizens of Israel, I remain Most sincerely yours, Prof. Steven Plaut Thursday, March 21, 2013
Tow Him, Moti!
Well, as you know, Obama and his entourage are in town. The local media are besides themselves in ecstasy, as are the local leftists. It is strange seeing so many Israelis getting so excited by the visit of some Kenyan. In any case, Obama used the opportunity to urge Israelis to seek peace by appeasing the Islamofascist terrorists. No surprise there. Obama tried to "speak over the heads" of the Israeli elected officials by urging a large assembly of Israeli students to demand that Israeli leaders "take risks" for "peace." We know what he meant by that. The assembly by the way was CLOSED to students from Ariel University, which Obama - following the Israeli tenured Left - evidently is boycotting because it is on the correct side of the 1967 Green Line. Now the funniest part of the visit so far was that the yanks flew in a bunch of armored Caddies to carry the entourage from the airport to Jerusalem and PLO-occupied Ramallah. But one of the cars broke down along the way (Obama was not in it). Someone called in a local Israeli towing service. So the press all day has been featuring photos of Moti's Towing Service and its prime tow truck lifting and dragging away the stricken welfare Cadillac. See this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9943357/Barack-Obama-in-Israel-the-Beast-limo-breaks-down.html. The truck had a large banner painted on its side that reads Moti Is Towing You. Well, I would like to take this opportunity to issue my own special personal appeal to Moti the tow truck guy: Moti, if any other Obama cars breaks down, especially the one in which Obama is riding, then please tow the car right away at my expense directly to Ariel University! Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Assimilationist Liberals (or asslibs for short) Quoting Scripture
by Steven Plaut When I was a lad, we used to suffer from the frequent visits of missionaries who often canvassed our neighborhood, presumably because of the large number of Jewish families whose souls could be saved there. Occasionally, I would chat up these people, and at one point, I asked about the training and preparation they undergo before taking to the streets to save our doomed souls. The missionary confided to me that she had learned 15 or 20 selected Biblical quotations in a special seminar - including many especially chosen because the quotes were thought to hold persuasive power for Jewish listeners - and she simply pulled these out during missionary visits. Possibly some of the missionaries knew their Bible backward and forward, but the ones with whom I came into contact were apparently all one-day-crash-course Bible thumpers. (I learned that all I needed to do to drive these neighborhood missionaries into a state of confused silence was to produce an alternative Biblical quote not on their list of 15 or 20, or show them how their quotes of choice had been wrenched out of their overall context.) This comes to mind because it is strongly reminiscent of a fad quite common these days among Jewish assimilated liberals and leftists in the United States. These people constitute the School of Jewish Politically-Correct Bible Thumpers. They advocate the PC fads and programs of the American Left, while coating them with a thin veneer of supposedly Biblical ethics. Like the missionaries of my youth, they learn a dozen or so select Biblical phrases, taken out of context, and argue that the Bible and traditional Judaism unambiguously require that one accept and support a left-wing political agenda. I assume that most readers are familiar with these folks. Examples of Jewish politically-correct Bible thumping abound. The most outrageous, of course, are the Cheech-and-Chong ethics and the political platform of the editors of Tikkun magazine, featuring the Politics of Meaning psychobabble promoted by "Rabbi" Michael Lerner. But many mainstream liberal leaders of the Jewish community also engage in Biblical posturing in order to conscript scripture for support of liberal fads. Generally, such Bible-based PC preaching operates through conjuring up the ethics of the Prophets as scriptural underpinning for the Left's political agenda. The term "Prophetic Ethics" is used to justify support for everything from affirmative action to abortion on demand, animal rights to homosexual marriage, ecological activism to various and sundry redistributionist social programs. The Oslo peace accord, it should go without saying, was accorded a particularly hallowed place in the doxology of the Jewish politically-correct Bible thumpers. What is one to make of all this? Let us begin by noting that the attempt by Jewish leftists to conjure up scriptural support for their political agenda might be somewhat more persuasive if these same people were practitioners of traditional Judaism. Orthodox politically-correct Bible thumping is extremely rare, albeit not completely non-existent. In most cases, politically-correct Bible thumpers are scripturally motivated only under circumstances that they find convenient, and with respect to those political causes they happen to find appealing. Otherwise, they simply ignore everything else in scripture and halacha (Jewish Law) that does not fit their political agenda. These folks are generally not Jews whose lifestyles are determined by Biblical rules regarding, say, diet, Sabbath, sexual relations, etc. Indeed, when Scripture clearly favors a moral or political position that is not fashionable, these same PC Bible thumpers suddenly decline to adapt themselves to Biblical ethics. At times, they will go through contortions to force their supposed understanding of these ethics into a PC mold. For example, there is probably nothing as clear-cut as the Biblical prohibition against homosexuality, yet the Thumpers insist that gay "marriage" is the ultimate manifestation of Biblical values. The very notion of gay rights is completely antithetical to Biblical morality; the Bible, in fact, explicitly labels sodomy an abomination and makes it a capital offense. You can agree or disagree with that opinion, but there is no room for any doubt as to what the Bible's position is. But that did not stop the PC branch of the Reform and Conservative movements from deciding that Reform rabbis can ordain gay marriages. I doubt Reconstructionist "rabbis" would have any problem performing a marriage between a man and his goat. Similarly, while the Jewish religious position on abortion is not identical with the one espoused by the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian denominations, abortion on demand when a mother's life is not in danger is hardly a position held by traditional Judaism. One can accept or reject the scriptural view of homosexuality or abortion - it's a free country. But if one is representing one's political agenda as being Biblically-based, why the arbitrarily selective distortion? The biggest problem with PC appeals to Prophetic Ethics and Jewish compassion is that there is absolutely no support in Jewish tradition for feel-good advocacy programs that actually exacerbate real-world problems. In other words, one cannot conscript Biblical ethics and morality on behalf of a political cause - even if doing so makes one feel righteous and moral - until one can at least show credibly that the cause would indeed resolve or alleviate real-world problems. The PC Biblical Ethics-poseurs are too lazy to go out and actually acquire the analytic tools needed for assessing policy proposals. Learning economics, statistics, cost/benefits accounting, etc., requires effort and investment. The PC postureurs prefer to practice effortless recreational compassion and armchair peacemaking. Besides, the very first thing one learns in social science and in policy analysis is that all things have tradeoffs. That is the one truth with which leftist Biblical Ethics-poseurs and other PC preachers simply cannot cope. If a policy proposal has both costs and benefits (and which does not?), there is no way that selective scriptural quotation and appeals to Prophetic Ethics can resolve the dilemma. If a proposal to improve the quality of the environment also produces higher food prices or higher energy or transportation prices and so impacts living standards (especially for the poor), what is one to do? Should the proposal be adopted or rejected in the name of justice and ethics? Social science has a tool for answering such dilemmas (namely, cost/benefits evaluation). Those who issue vague and highly generalized appeals to Biblical ethics do not. They simply want to make themselves feel righteous without having to exert any real effort. Similarly, one cannot rationalize any policy in the name of the Prophetic love of peace unless it can first be shown to produce peace. The Oslo peace formula cannot be rationalized by an appeal to the Biblical yearning for peace unless it can be shown analytically to lead truly to peace. Those who think the Oslo process does not lead to peace are not only justified - they are obligated - to oppose it, precisely because of their yearning for peace and their ethical concerns. Opponents of the Oslo process are no less fond of peace than its politically correct supporters, just more skeptical or analytically dissident. (For the sake of argument, I am intentionally ignoring those sections of scripture that rule out territorial compromise in the Land of Israel altogether, EVEN for peace.) In some cases, the PC Bible thumpers take positions in such clear contradiction to the scriptural ethics they claim to uphold that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. You would never know from the "social action" agitprop of the Reform and the Conservatives against the death penalty that Judaism is unambiguously in FAVOR of it! Not only is there no Biblical case for animal rights (although the humane treatment of animals is indeed mandated when they are not being eaten or turned into shoes), but one of the most clear-cut messages of the Bible is that human interests always take priority over those of animals. It's true that the Bible does not explicitly prohibit vegetarianism, except on Passover, but there is absolutely nothing therein that mandates it, and much rabbinic commentary is concerned with the rules of kosher slaughter and diet. Another example: While there is a clear Biblical basis for charity, it is equally clear that the emphasis is on individual charitable acts over which the giver exercises control, choice and personal responsibility. There is nothing that can be interpreted as mandating a massive welfare state that deprives individuals of control over their property; indeed, a good deal of Biblical and rabbinic law concerns the protection and preservation of private property rights. The main forms of Biblical mandatory income-redistribution regard funding Levites and priests. Finally, it should be abundantly clear to anyone reading the Bible, even superficially, that Prophetic Ethics are premised upon and augment - and in many cases are thought to be a means for achieving, protecting and developing - Jewish national existence and national self-interest. (Contrast this with the recent fatwa by Tikkun's Moonbeam Lerner - that the Jubilee laws mean Israel has to give back its lands to the "Palestinians.") The very same Jewish politically correct Bible thumpers who argue that Prophetic Ethics mandate the Left's political agenda are generally the first to distance themselves from (if not outright denounce) all acts and ideas designed to promote and protect Jewish national existence and national interests. The hypocritical pretend-enthusiasm for Prophetic Ethics on the part of the PC Bible Thumpers is best understood as part of the overall trend of Jewish assimilation in North America. Liberalism has been the main avenue of assimilation for North American Jews. In effect, assimilationist Jews long ago substituted the liberal/Left political agenda for Judaism as their religion. They are as zealously attached to this pseudo-religion as most Jews in the past were to authentic Judaism. Like all religious beliefs, this devotion to liberalism is by definition non-rational. Assimilated Jews adhere to this religion of liberalism even when it is clearly harmful to their own self- interests, as in the case of the apartheid racial preference policy euphemistically known as "affirmative action". And the astronomical intermarriage rates of American non-Orthodox Jews reflect the fact that, once liberalism has replaced Judaism as the religion of the Jews, marrying a non-Jewish liberal is simply not looked upon as marrying outside the faith. Jewish and gentile liberals observe the same "religion". Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play about a royal family of Danes. It uses Danish images and symbols and takes place, as it were, inside a Danish castle. But it would be absurd to represent Hamlet as a Danish play. It is an Elizabethan English play. In the same way, the Jewish Politically Correct Bible Thumpers use Jewish imagery and symbols in order to market the political agenda of the Left. But it is absurd to represent their position as one motivated by and expressing Jewish traditional ethics and Biblical morality. Theirs is a leftist ideology, and not, by any stretch of the imagination, a Jewish one. Monday, March 18, 2013
Well, if you were looking for an alternative way to "celebrate"
Passover this you, I suppose one of your options would be to use the new pro-terror anti-Semitic jihadist Passover Haggadah prepared by the anti-Israel "Jewish Voices for Peace" cult. You can see the "Haggadah" in full here: http://he.scribd.com/doc/87713706/Hagadah-JVP-Final-2012 . The "Haggadah" is the project of the JVP pseudo-rabbi, one Brant Rosen. (He runs an anti-Israel blog here: http://rabbibrant.com/category/jewish-voice-for-peace/ , which links to some of the most anti-Semitic web sites on the planet). Brant has a Reconstructionist "ordination" - I think he got it from Rolling Stone Magazine - and heads some sort of Recon-Deconstructionist ashram in Evanston, Illinois. Brant is basically a Mikey Lerner on steroids. I am pretty sure a Hamas flag flies over his "shul." To give you a sampling from his "Haggadah," the "Ten Plagues" there all refer to supposed mistreatment of the Palestinians by Israel (things like "profiteering" - whatever that is, political prisoners and settlements). The Seder plate includes an Orange – "Symbolizing building Jewish community where women, queer, and transgender people are welcomed and recognized as full valued participants." You know, a fruit that can be squeezed? The text is peppered with citations from Moslem terrorists and from the Koran. There is at least one open call for Islamic terrorism, a "poem" entitled "Revenge." The entire Dayenu, renamed the Nakba Dayenu, is about supposed acts of evil done by Israel against poor innocent Arabs. There are endorsements for boycotts and divestments against Israel in the text, and the entire third cup of wine is a salute to the BDS aggression against Israel. There is a special section on "pinkwashing," the nonsense term used by the Fascist Left to refer to people praising Israel for the tolerance there towards homosexuals. The "Next Year in Jerusalem" theme of course is an endorsement for the "Palestinian Right of Return." And of course the real message of Passover is that no one should dream of attacking Iran or disrupting its plans to nuke the Jews.. If you would like to sit on your digital camera and then send Brant a cyber-moon, his email address is rabbi@jrc-evanston.org. The Tikkun crowd is only slightly less wacky than the Evanston Reconstructionist pagans. Here is a reprint of what sort of Passover Seder you should be running according to Rabbi Cheech and Rabbi Chong (Lerner and Waskow), the ADMOR-im of this important school of theology: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/2733 This Year Make Your Passover Seder a Multi-Galactic One Important Passover Message from Mikey Lerner and the Entire Staff of Tikkun Magazine, the Jewish New Age pro-LSD Magazine: A few years back, Tikkun's Rabbi Arthur Woodstock issued a call to make it a multicultural Passover Seder that year: in other words, a mix of Judaism and PC paganism. Rabbi Woodstock, above Well, this year Tikkun magazine has issued a new call for all Jews: You all should make yours a Multi-Galactic Seder!!!! Yes, this is the year to invite assorted beings from other planets to your spacey politically-correct Seder, to prove your devotion to multi-galactic understanding and stamping out speciesism along with SUVs. The guests will join in and participate in the many traditional Tikkunesque Passover traditions. First, the Seder begins with the washing of the hands, or, in the case of visitors from Vulcan, the tentacles. Then the guests dine on lamb's legs made from vegan tofu. The Seder ends with the munching of traditional holiday Tikkun macaroons, made out of matzos flour and hashish. Served on recyclable dinner bowls. Now to help make your Tikkun Passover multi-galactic Seder complete, "Rabbis" Arthur Woodstock and Michael of Meaning have rewritten the Passover song "Who knows One?" Here is how the new version will go: Who knows One? I know One! One is the greatest rabbi of all time, the Rebbe Jerry Garcia, Shlita. Who knows Two? I know Two! Two is Rabbi Cheech and Rabbi Chong, who seem to write most of the articles for Tikkun magazine. (Alternative version - Two is Two States for Two Peoples: the Jordanian "people" and the Palestinian "people.") Who knows Three? I know Three! Three is the number of square meters Israel should be left with after adopting policies advocated by Tikkun. Who knows Four? I know Four! Four is the greatest sages of Torah learning of all time, according to Tikkun: Rabbis John, Paul, George and Ringo. Who knows Five? I know Five! Five is the five genders officially proclaimed by Hillary (back when Lerner was her temporary guru of Meaning) at the International Wymmyn's Conference in Beijing, fully endorsed by Tikkun. Who knows Six? I know Six! Six is the SIX-TIES, my Heavy Tikkun Dude! Who knows Seven? I know Seven! Seven is the seven basic nutritional groups required to make you a happy and healthy progressive, namely: cannabis, marijuana, hashish, pot, weed, grass, and dope. Who knows Eight? I know Eight! Eight is the number of people who really read Tikkun magazine. Who knows nine? I know nine! Nine is the number of people on earth who actually regard Mikey Lerner as a rabbi. Who knows ten? I know ten! Ten is the median IQ score for Tikkun readers. Who knows eleven? I know eleven! Eleven is the number of the Eleventh Commandment: "Thou Shalt Be Trendy!" Who knows twelve? I know twelve! Twelve is the number of times Michael Lerner can say "loving and caring" in one minute (the fewest number of times, that is). Who knows thirteen? I know thirteen! Thirteen is the number of sentences from the entire Bible that Tikkun editors have actually read. Michael of Meaning, Rabbi Moonbeam, above Oh, and you can read the Oslo Dayenu here: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/2727 Saturday, March 16, 2013
A few days ago it was the one-year anniversary of the appointment
of Asher Grunis as Israel's Chief Justice on its Supreme Court. At the time it was expected that Grunis would reform the Court by distancing it from the many years of dominance by leftist anti-democratic "judicial activists." The good news is that Grunis has been a far cry better than his two predecessors on the job, Dorit Beinisch and Aharon Barak. The late Robert Bork once described Barak as one of the worst Supreme Court justices in the democratic world. Grunis is clearly not a leftwing lunatic of the Beinisch-Barak mold. He has also by and large resisted the temptation to try to micro-manage defense and foreign policy in Israel. His two predecessors were of the opinion that the Supreme Court should trump the elected government of the people and dictate the tiniest decisions, even very technical decisions, about how the military should behave. Barak insisted that EVERYTHING in the country was subject to his judicial review and veto. Those two predecessors were also of the opinion that unelected judges should have the power to overturn decisions taken by the elected representatives of the people in the parliament. Grunis has not behaved as a similar judicial tyrant. Grunis has made a few sensible and wise decisions, like his refusal to pander to the Moonbat Left and the Ivory Cartel, who demanded that Ariel University not be recognized as a bona fide university. One of his BEST rulings was in a recent case in which a nuisance suit had been filed by a radical leftist group, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which was ordered to pay a 45,000 NIS fine for having submitted the frivolous court petition against a hospital for supposedly "mistreating the poor who live in Ashdod." The fine should have been 450,000 NIS, but, as it was, it was unprecedentedly large and has the Moonbat Left in Israel now soiling itself. Grunis has, however, been a serious disappointment. In a long series of decisions, he has sided with the Left and imposed its ideology on the country, even when the legal basis for doing so was completely flimsy and dubious. Perhaps the worst Grunis ruling to date was the decision to allow the terrorist Hanin Zoabi to run for the Knesset even after the Israeli elections commission had banned her from running, even after her arrest for violently assaulting Israeli soldiers on the Gaza Flotilla terrorist ship. Winston Churchill did not allow openly pro-Nazi people to run for the parliament in the middle of World War II, and in fact JAILED them, but Winnie did not have Grunis to deal with. Israel is now the only country on the planet whose Supreme Court insists that terrorists dedicated to the annihilation of the country must be allowed to sit in the parliament of the country they do not recognize. Grunis has also opposed or overturned a series of attempts by the Zionist majority in Israel to rein in the abuses of the anti-Israel Left, such as demands for transparency in funding of anti-Israel leftist NGOs, or a proposal that would allow victims of leftist initiatives to boycott Israel or Israelis to sue the organizers of those boycotts for damages. He has also opposed various measures requiring gestures of loyalty from Israeli Arabs. He defended the "right" of Zoabi's party to mock the national anthem in the last election while REFUSING to overturn a series of decisions by the election board to censor and ban "objectionable" ads and slogans by Rightwing parties. In other decisions, Grunis and his Court voted to remove two Jewish settlements, Migran and Ulpana, in the "occupied territories." The same Court has NOT ordered the removal of Palestinians squatting on lands they illegally occupy in the West Bank nor Bedouins illegally squatting on enormous tracts of the Negev. Last week Grunis ordered the government to justify and rationalize its policy of evicting illegal infiltrators from Eritrea and Sudan. No other court on earth would order any other government on earth to justify enforcement of restrictions on illegal infiltration, well - except maybe judges appointed by Obama. Will the court also demand that the government explain why it is spraying the locusts who infiltrated the border? What about THEIR rights? I guess the best thing that one can say about the Grunis Court so far is that it could be worse and in fact was far worse under Beinisch and Barak. However, Tzipi Livni is to be the new Minister of Justice in the new Netanyahu government and can be expected to try to smack the Court back to its earlier far-leftist orientation under those two previous Chief "Justices." And Grunis is due to retire in less than two years. He is likely to be replaced by yet another far-leftist judicial activist, another Barak clone or groupie. 2. With no connection at all to the previous matter, if you always wanted to know how to say "Facebook" in Talmudic Aramaic, it is Sifra Di-anfin. Friday, March 15, 2013
1. Well, you will happy to hear that the United Nations has at long
last decided to step up and defend mistreated suffering Syrian civilians. The only itsy bitsy problem is that the ONLY "mistreatment" of "Syrian civilians" that the UN Human Rights Commission is concerned with is that of Golan Heights "Syrians" by Israel. A new UN report condemns the "mistreatment" of "Syrians by the Israeli "occupiers." The UN considers the Golan Heights, also known as the Biblical Bashan and Gilad, to be "occupied." Thus the "Syrians" living there, meaning mainly Druse, are victims of Israeli occupation. Or to put this in different terms, with scores of Syrian civilians murdered every day by the Asad junta, the only "Syrian" people whose "mistreatment" the UN cares about the only ones who are NOT mistreated, the only ones who are NOT suffering or being murdered. 2. Well, the new Israeli cabinet is more or less in place. And we can now comment upon it. I think the first important thing to do is emit a large sigh of relief. It could have been FAR worse. Sure, there are still reasons for worry and concern, there are some incompetent hacks in the cabinet, and there are the usual empty silly meaningless cabinet jobs, where a cabinet minister manages a de facto empty ministry (I call them Potemkin ministries). In addition, there are other ministries that should be shut down altogether because they do harm and simply need to be eliminated. In fact, in a moment I will issue an open invitation to Naftali Bennett to do just that. But before that, the Defense Ministry is in the highly competent hands of Moshe "Bogie" Yaalon. He is one of the better political leaders in Israel and in fact I would prefer to see him replace Netanyahu as Prime Minister. Gideon Saar, who was doing a fairly good job in the last cabinet as Minister of Education and was fairly aggressive against the tenured Left and other manifestations of treason in pedagogic institutions, is now Minister of Interior, which is also an important and powerful post. He is in charge of Israel's local authorities (township governments), which are notoriously corrupt. So he has the chance to clean up the muck. We will see if he delivers. He can also evict the ISM "anarchists" and similar terrorists. The Education Ministry will be run by one of the more interesting figures from Yair Lapid's party, although - like Lapid - he is a large unknown. Shai Piron is an Orthodox rabbi with liberal and moderate views, a humanist, and seems to be a decent guy. How he will handle the Tenured Left remains to be seen. Lapid will be Finance Minister, generally a thankless job in Israel, the guy who gets blamed by everyone who thinks they deserve a larger handout. Lapid is a great unknown, but he has a great advantage in knowing nothing at all about economics and finance, but realizing that he knows nothing. Most of the boondoggles in Israel in economics were committed by politicians who imagined that they understood something about economics. His predecessor Steinetz was a professor of philosophy who also knew he knew nothing about economics, and so did a reasonably good job, maybe B minus level, although might have done better. Gilad Ardan is one of the few Likud figures of intelligence and he will run the Ministry of Communications, in charge of electronic communications infrastrucure and its pricing. Steinetz has been demoted to the Ministry of Energy, a largely empty and meaningless post. Likud's Limor Livnat remains at the Ministry of Culture; she has been snarling at the subsidiztion programs that prop up anti-Israel leftist film-makers so she might do some good there. Bennett will run the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, a word about this follows. Lieberman will remain the Foreign Minister, where he does not really make policy but has the power to annoy the Left and the anti-Israel urchins around the world. The semi-literate Amir Peretz will run the Potemkin Ministry of Tourism, also an empty post where he can do little mischief. Yael German, who had been a competent and popular mayor of Herzliya, will run health. The other cabinet ministers basically have honorary titles and little more than that, sitting in empty Potemkin ministries. The one true disaster so far in the cabinet was Netanyahu's turning the Ministry of Justice over to Tzipi Livni, the head of one of the two factions left over from Kadima, which misgoverned Israel under Olmert and Sharon. The Minister of Justice is a powerful role and participates in selection of judges. The judicial system in Israel is already a disaster and allowing leftist birdbrained Livni ("Tzipi Livni" in Hebrew means White Birdie) to select judges is the worst decision so far by Netanyahu (well, other than his intention of turning the whole Negev over to the Bedouins). Bibi could have given her some meaningless post like minister of tourism or minister of the retired, but folded. Disaster is likely to follow. Another piece of good news is that none of the religious or Chareidi parties will be sitting in the cabinet, for the first time since - well - since ever, as far as I recall. That means the new government can kick the butts of the Chareidim and slash back the extortion granted to them, end their wholesale exemptions from national or military service, and take them off welfare. We will see if the government delivers. I have saved Naftali Bennett for last. As you recall, I supported Bennett before the election and still favor him and his party. Bennett is not just a principled Zionist, he is also a free-market-leaning entrepreneur, someone who has spoken out against "corporate welfare," handouts to corporations, tax exemptions and subsidies. I have an open friendly challenge for Bennett. As the new Minister of Commerce and Industry, the test of your success in the post should be that when you LEAVE it in four years or whenever the next election is held, this Ministry should not exist any longer. Your challenge is to shut it down altogether. The Ministry is an anti-productive, anti-competitive, dirigiste monstrosity, a bureaucracy whose motivation is to preserve as many monopolies as possible, to obstruct imports, and to "plan and control" as much of the economy as possible in bolshevik Gosplan manner. In addition, the Ministry has made profits in corporate Israel something that bureaucrats ladle out, not something that hard work and entrepreneurial imagination earn. The Ministry is also the main force for interfering with imports and protecting special interests from import competition. Naftali, prove that I was correct in placing my faith in you. Prove your commitment to principle and productivity. After 65 years of interfering with the economy, close down this Ministry ALTOGETHER! Thursday, March 14, 2013
The Israeli Left continues its metamorphosis from idiocy to treason.
Noa Shaindlinger, an Israeli PhD student at the University of Toronto (Near and Middle East Civilizations), is one of the most openly treasonous Israeli Far Leftists. This week she is being discussed in the media thanks to her publishing a call for celebration when two Israeli chopper pilots were killed in an accident (http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/03/13/israel-peace-activist-and-hamas-celebrate-death-of-israeli-pilots/noa-shaindlinger/). The two pilots were superheroes of the Jewish people. Shaindlinger is superscum. She is a regular writer for this anti-Israel web site financed by European anti-Semites: http://972mag.com/?s=shaindlinger . As it turns out, the very same Shaindlinger has long been a regular stalwart on the "ALEF" chat list that continues to operate under the auspices of the University of Haifa. The "ALEF" list is a forum for disseminating anti-Israel and anti-Semitic materials, and its "members" include jihadniks, Neo-Nazis, and other anti-Semites. Here are some citations from that list, after which is the contact information for the President of the University of Haifa. You might want to send him your comments about all this. An ALEF Sampling of Noa Shaindlinger: ALEF List is used as a vehicle to smear an Israeli army officer and attempt to get him targeted for violent "retaliation" by defaming him as a murderer - posted on ALEF on 09 December 2012 From: "Noa Shaindlinger" <mhfan25@yahoo.com> To: "1 in our name" <nion-tor@yahoogroups.com>, "alef@list.haifa.ac.il" <alef@list.haifa.ac.il> [alef] Activists expose the name of the soldier who killed Mustafa Tamimi According to the IOF, investigation is still ongoing. The name of the soldier who shot and killed Tamimi in cold blood exactly a year ago has been kept a secret by the army. A group of Israeli solidarity activists managed to identify him and launched a social network campaign calling for accountability. [link to website naming soldier included in the original message not re-posted by Isracampus] This Hatred is Disseminated via the University of Haifa For Noa Shaindlinger (mhfan25@yahoo.com) Israel does not exist any more, only "Israel" - posted on ALEF on 03 June 2009 Petition: UC Davis summer abroad in "Israel" http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/583176589 This Hatred is Disseminated via theUniversity of Haifa Noa Shaindlinger (mhfan25@yahoo.com) posted this on ALEF on 16 March 2009 Re: [alef] Israeli peace movement The entire "peace" discourse is misleading. "Peace" is what the colonizer want - no resistance, pacification of the colonized and final subjugation. Hence pax romana and pax americana: all is peaceful at the other end of the gun.The Zionist "peace" movements are part and parcel of the hegemonic apartheid regime. In fact, the existence of the "peace" and "humanitarianism" discourses allow for occupation and suppression to exist and feed into the colonizer's violence ("the most humane and moral army in the world", "humanitarian ceasefire" and other gems)."Peace" should never be the ultimate goal - it's resistance. Resistance to occupation, to expulsions, land seizures. Resistance to racist state apparatus everywhere, to hegemony and domination, to muzzling of dissenting voices, to cultural appropriation, to economic marginalization and to imperial intervention. Resistance should be the basis of transnational (rather than international) anticolonial movements, and not naive reiteration of John Lennon's "give peace a chance". We just can't afford to. This Hatred is Disseminated via the University of Haifa Noa Shaindlinger posted this on ALEF on 23 November 2008 Of course the majority of Zionists would be satisfied with the two state solution as it legitimizes their conquest and depopulation of Palestine. The majority of Palestinians are forced into submission and acceptance of that "solution" by their Zionists occupiers, their US ally and the collaborative Abbas regime. But that so called solution leaves out the majority of Palestinian - those in the refugee camps, the diasporas and those living inside the Zionist state as second class citizens. The one state solution (in which Israel ceases to exist) isn't something concocted by a "bunch of confused intellectuals", but is common sense, compliance with international law and human sense of justice. Noa This Hatred is Disseminated via the University of Haifa Taken from http://www.isracampus.org.il/ALEF%20Watch.htm To tell the president of Haifa University what you think of all this, contact: President of the University of Haifa Mr. Amos Shapira Tel: 972-4-8240101 Fax: 972-4-8288110 E-mail: a.shapira@univ.haifa.ac.il Saturday, March 09, 2013
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/lincoln_as_bleeding_heart_peacenik.html
March 9, 2013 Lincoln as Bleeding Heart Peacenik? By Steven Plaut An interesting trend has emerged in recent weeks. The Israeli Left, along with most of the world's pseudo-intellectual classes, has suddenly discovered Abraham Lincoln, and is proclaiming him an honorary member of "Peace Now." Obviously it is thanks to the new Hollywood movie. Columnists in the Israeli media are claiming that Israel needs to follow the ethical leadership of Lincoln. Just as Lincoln freed the slaves, or so their mantra goes, so Israel must "free" the Palestinians from "occupation." The Israeli Left has embraced Lincoln because it is convinced that, if Lincoln is regarded as a moral champion, identification with Lincoln must clearly lead one to support the political agenda of the Israeli Left. First and foremost this would mean supporting Palestinian demands and "resistance." So what should we make of this new "Lincoln as Leftist Pro-Palestinian" campaign? Well, even someone with only the shallowest familiarity with American history would know that the two most important principles represented by Lincoln would make him for all intents and purposes the ethical analogue of the Jewish settler leaders in the West Bank, and not a Peace Now whiner. Lincoln fought the American Civil War first and foremost in to order to prevent the partition or division of his homeland, and he was fully prepared to use massive military force to achieve this goal. Lincoln was in favor of peace but not under all conditions or at any price. Those in Israel proposing such a "two-state solution" are the 21st century's Copperheads. Second, Lincoln had no reluctance about using the word "treason," and throughout the Civil War he made it clear that he considered the Union war against the Confederacy and its supporters to be a campaign against treason. Those who supported secession or the Confederacy were engaging in treason, not academic debate. Lincoln did not mollycoddle traitors in the name of "understanding the Other." He did not insist that those opposing national interests be allowed to control the universities and the courts and the media. Those who are trying to deconstruct Lincoln as the ultimate opponent of "occupation" will have to explain why his party imposed a severely harsh occupation on the member states of the Confederacy, one that continued for years. The analogue to the PLO and Hamas in the occupied Confederacy was the Ku Klux Klan, and it was suppressed mercilessly in actions that included Union militias acting as anti-Klan death squads. There were thousands of arrests of KKK "militants" and "activists," and martial law was imposed upon counties with Klan activities. No one proposed seeking peace by granting the Klan its own country. Aside from the two most obvious characteristics of Lincoln, which make him the moral analogue of Jewish settler leaders in the West Bank, Lincoln had a few other features that will make the Left squirm. Lincoln abolished habeas corpus during wartime. He had traitors executed and deported, and had no hesitation about the use of capital punishment. Among those executed, William Bruce Mumford was convicted of treason and hanged in 1862 for tearing down a United States flag. Some 500 people were executed by hanging or by firing squad during the War, some for desertion. At least one of those hanged was a woman, Mary Surratt (executed for her role in the assassination of Lincoln). Lincoln had no patience for terrorists, known in the Civil War as "bushwhackers," and ordered them to be executed by firing squad. "Bridge burners" were given the same treatment. He believed there was ONLY a military solution to the problems of terrorism. Lincoln also imposed censorship on the press and suppressed treasonous journalism. Want to ponder how Lincoln would handle the pro-Hamas radical Left in Israel? Then in Sherman's march to the sea, Lincoln conducted war against CIVILIANS, explicitly targeting and attacking the civilian population and its infrastructure to end rebellion and treason. With no Betselem and no Supreme Court interference. Lincoln also sponsored the Homestead Act of 1862, perhaps the greatest settlements construction effort in history. Perhaps most notably, Lincoln imposed an uncompromising blockade upon the entire Confederacy. The very same Israeli Leftists, who insist that lifting the "embargo" of Gaza is the highest form of humane morality so that the Hamas can more easily import weapons, will have a an interesting challenge explaining the blockade imposed by their new-found moral champion, Abraham Lincoln. It was a policy proudly described by Lincoln as "starving the South." Food and civilian commodities were prevented from passing through the blockade. Guess how Lincoln would have dealt with "Gaza Flotilla" blockade runners? Honest Abe used exactly the same blockade tactic against the Confederacy over which the Israeli Left is now sobbing its eyes out! And frankly my dear, I don't give a damn! Friday, March 08, 2013
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/the-so-called-klan-infiltration-of-oberlin-college/
The So-Called 'Klan' Infiltration of Oberlin College Posted By Steven Plaut On March 8, 2013 The news media have been buzzing for several days about the supposed appearance on the campus of Oberlin College in Ohio of a person dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe. Supposedly this was just the latest twist in an upsurge of "hate speech" on the ultra-liberal campus, manifested in graffiti and other expressions. Oberlin College is an elite liberal arts college that is so far Left that it is in the same league as Bard and Amherst. In the 19th century the town of Oberlin was an end station for the underground railway smuggling slaves to the north, and the college likes to pretend it is still part of some grand political action movement. A sculpture celebrating the town's role in freeing slaves is still an important feature. Leftwing agitprop is common in many of the college's departments. I know. Years back I was on the faculty of Oberlin. A while later I was on the faculty at Berkeley, and can make comparisons. At Berkeley the townies are leftist nuts but the students are mainly hard -working conservative Asians and the faculty are surprisingly conservative, with exceptions in the usual departments of dingbatocracy. At Oberlin, in contrast, almost all of the students and faculty make Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky look like Republicans. I was one of only two faculty members there who voted for Reagan. The other was a rightwing professor of German history. We got along famously and loved mocking the hardcore members of the Communist Party who had offices down the corridor from us. The other faculty members just passed us clicking their tongues in pity. For decades Oberlin has hosted the annual conventions of the Trotskyite "Socialist Workers Party." In spite of the name "Socialist Workers" you should not presume that members of this party have jobs. In any case, whenever they are in town, the college turns over "security" on the campus to the Trots. When I was teaching there, the SWP's NKVD squad tried to prevent me from entering my office building. When I complained to the administration, I was told that the Trots were granted control of campus security because they had legitimate fears of FBI infiltration, and so had the right to prevent me from entering my office. In other words, the SWP did not have to wait for the Revolution to create a police state, since Oberlin was already letting them do it there. SWP party missionaries would roam the campus and stop students to convert them to Trotskyism. "What is a Trotskyite?" one student asked, and the cadre responded, "Well you have heard of Stalinism, right? and if you are not a Stalinist then you must be a Trotskyite." An Oberlin student that year asked me what the difference was between a Trotskyite and a Trotskyist. I replied that it was roughly the same as the difference between cow manure and bull manure. News of the "Klan assault" against Oberlin spread immediately to the international news media. In the aftermath of the "assault," all classes were shut down for a day by the Oberlin administration, so that students could attend a 60s-style "teach-in" about the horrors of bigotry and learn to be sensitive. The local police were also called onto the campus to investigate "hate speech." The college president, Marvin Krislov, issued an official apology on behalf of the college to "students who felt threatened." The college claims a series of "hate crimes" has taken place on campus, many involving graffiti and one involving a student getting mugged near the campus. But the trigger for the campus shutdown was a dubious "report" that someone was seen on campus near the "Afrikan Heritage House" dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes. There were a number of problems with this Klan report, even assuming the "perp" was not someone simply protesting the misspelling of the word African. Slate and others claim the "person in Klan robes" was merely a woman who stepped out into the cold wrapped in a blanket. Even if it was someone wearing a Klan robe, why assume it was anything other than some sort of frat prank? Why turn it into an international headline revealing the underlying racism in Obama's Amerika? (Yes, that is how lots of Oberlin people spell America.) Not surprising for a college consisting of people still living in the 1960s, Israel bashing is more common than sleet at Oberlin. There is a boisterous group of "Students for a Free Palestine" (founded three decades back) and "Students for Justice for Palestine," groups that make little effort to hide their support for Hamas, Palestinian terrorism, and atrocities against Jews. Oberlin has hosted more than its fair share of "Israel Apartheid Week" events, in which students call for the annihilation of the only country in the Middle East that is NOT an apartheid regime. Back when I was on its faculty a "Palestinian Human Rights Watch" organization operated on campus. It was promoting boycotts and divestment from Israel, which it claimed resembled apartheid South Africa. The most noteworthy aspect of the "Klan assault" story involving Oberlin is the hypocrisy regarding anti-Jewish campus hate speech. The same administration so upset by a fictional Klan robe has nothing at all to say about campus events openly endorsing murderous attacks against Israeli Jews or celebrating genocidal Palestinian movements. Oberlin had a long romance with Edward Said, hosting him on numerous occasions for events that triggered Bash-the-Jews rhetoric and even granting him a special award of honor in 1996. The college has its own chapter of the anti-Israel "J Street." Oberlin president Krislov, who is Jewish and was once a member of a Zionist youth movement, has done nothing about these anti-Semitic campus events thinly disguised as support for Palestinians. The same Anti-Defamation League liberals who congratulated Oberlin College for taking decisive steps against the imaginary Klansman on campus have never had a word to say about the malicious anti-Semitic defamations by the "Students for Justice for Palestine," the "Israel Apartheid Week" hoodlums, and the other groups that bash Jews on campus. Neither do the other liberal postureurs against racism and bigotry. The one question no one is asking regarding the "Klan incident" is this: Suppose someone really HAD strolled about the Oberlin snowdrifts in Klan uniform. Why is THAT not protected speech? Why is that a crime? And before answering that, it behooves us to recall that dressing up as Hamas terrorists and smearing Jews in campus "street theater" is not only considered protected speech on most Western campuses these days, but "Let's Destroy Israel" conferences and rallies are held openly every week. The make-pretend free speech absolutists insist that nothing at all should be allowed to interfere with the right of students to call for annihilation of Israel and mass murder of its population. But a snide comment about blacks or homosexuals is considered "hate speech," and it justifies calling in the police and shutting down the entire campus while the perps of "hate speech" are hunted down. Speech codes proliferate, which make it an expellable offense to say "I disapprove of homosexuality." Denouncing Israel as an "apartheid" regime that must be obliterated, celebrating suicide bombings against Israelis, or denouncing Jews as racists is all just nice clean academic discourse. Wednesday, March 06, 2013
Yes, the Negev is the victim of a massive swarm of destructive
pests and repulsive insects causing widespread devastation. I am of course referring to the anti-Israel tenured Leftists at Ben Gurion University. In a completely unrelated story: Israel battles swarm of locusts from Egypt Israel sprays pesticides from air and land in effort to kill swarm that covered nearly 2,000 acres overnight http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/israel-battles-swarm-locusts-egypt Tuesday, March 05, 2013
Lincoln as West Bank Jewish Settler
By Steven Plaut An interesting trend has emerged in recent weeks. The Israeli Left, along with most of the world's pseudo-intellectual classes, has suddenly discovered Abraham Lincoln. Obviously it is thanks to the new Hollywood movie. Leftists do not read books; they form their moral evaluations mainly based on fashionable movies, like the abominations that Israel sent to the Oscar ceremonies this year or like the movies produced by Michael Moore. The Israeli Left has embraced Lincoln because it is convinced that, if Lincoln is regarded as a moral champion, clearly identification with Lincoln must lead one to support the political agenda of the Israeli Left. First and foremost this would mean supporting Palestinian demands and aggression against Jews. And of course the "social justice" economic and social bolshevism of the Left. Take the column by Bradley Burston, the English-language columnist for Haaretz, that Palestinian newspaper printed in Hebrew, from a few days ago. You can read it here: http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/as-lincoln-abolished-slavery-israel-must-abolish-occupation.premium-1.505908 The title pretty much tells you what you need to know: 'As Lincoln abolished slavery, Israel must abolish occupation." Bradley opines: 'I realize now that I am an abolitionist and that occupation is slavery. I also realize that I need to pay more attention to Abraham Lincoln, in his ability to remind us all of the wisdom hidden in the obvious.' If you have a strong stomach, read the whole article. Then today (March 5) we have a column in Haaretz by one Ithamar Handelman Smith, who claims to be a writer and journalist, one who is so anti-Israel that the Likud government is likely to grant him a governmental subsidy to make some Bash-Israel flicks. His column is here: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/what-do-you-know-of-lincoln-ms-livnat.premium-1.507280 It is titled ' What do you know of Lincoln, Ms. Livnat? He opines: 'The culture minister couldn't see the parallels between the Academy Award-winning story she loved (Lincoln -- SP) and the stories behind the Israeli documentaries she shunned.' You will like this excerpt from Smith: 'Israel is a democracy to be proud of? Maybe, if you're extremist-right-wing-Jewish settlers. But everyone else Arabs, Haredim, African refugees, leftists live here under one of the least democratic regimes in the Western world. And no, a democracy doesn't get defensive about movies like "The Gatekeepers" and "5 Broken Cameras." A democracy learns from films like these about what's wrong with it and what can be fixed.' Not of course from any books! SO what do we make of this new "Lincoln as Leftist Pro-Palestinian social democrat" campaign by Israel's Left and by Haaretz? Well, even someone with only the shallowest familiarity with American history would know that the two most important principles represented by Lincoln would make him for all intents and purposes the ethical analogue of the Jewish settler leaders in the West Bank. Lincoln fought the American Civil War first and foremost in to order to prevent the division of his homeland, and he was fully prepared to use massive military force to achieve that goal. This makes him the moral brother of every Jew in the world who is OPPOSED to partition of the Land of Israel and carving out from it any Palestinian state. Those proposing such a "two-state solution" are the 21st century's copperheads. Second, Lincoln had no reluctance about using the word "treason," and throughout the Civil War he made it clear that he considered the Union war against the Confederacy and its supporters to be a campaign against treason. Those who supported succession or the Confederacy were consistently described by Lincoln as "traitors." Those who opposed the Union's national interests were engaging in treason, not academic freedom. Lincoln did not mollycoddle traitors in the name of "understanding the Other." He did not insist that those opposing national interests be allowed to control the universities and the courts and the media. Lincoln's war against treason did not make him a 19th century Haaretz columnist but rather the moral ally of all those who despise Haaretz and who oppose the anti-Israel Left in Israel. Aside from those two most obvious characteristics of Lincoln, which make him the moral analogue of Jewish settler leaders in the West Bank, Lincoln had a few other features that will make the Left squirm. Lincoln abolished habeas corpus during wartime. He had traitors executed and deported, and had no hesitation about the use of capital punishment. Lincoln also imposed censorship on the press and suppressed treasonous journalism. Want to ponder how Lincoln would handle Haaretz? Then in Sherman's march to the sea, Lincoln conducted war against CIVILIANS, explicitly targeting and attacking the civilian population and its infrastructure to end rebellion and treason. With no Betselem and no Supreme Court interference. Perhaps most notably, Lincoln also imposed an uncompromising blockade upon the Confederacy. The very same Israeli Leftists, who insist that lifting the "embargo" of Gaza is the highest form of humane morality so that the Hamas can more easily import weapons, will have an interesting challenge explaining the blockade imposed by the world's moral champion, Abraham Lincoln. Guess how Lincoln would have dealt with "Gaza Flotilla" blockade runners. Honest Abe used exactly the same tactic against the Confederacy over which the Israeli bedwetting Left is now sobbing its eyes out! And frankly my dear I don't give a damn!
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