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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Steven Plaut</title>
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		<title>The &#8216;Cycle of Violence&#8217; Fantasy in the Middle East</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/the-cycle-of-violence-fantasy-in-the-middle-east/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-cycle-of-violence-fantasy-in-the-middle-east</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Dec 2014 05:12:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conflict]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[WWII]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247184</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Imagining how the media would have reported on WWII using today's logic regarding Israel. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/19366_1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247188" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/19366_1.jpg" alt="19366_1" width="283" height="203" /></a>Ernst Eduard vom Rath was a German diplomat representing the Third Reich in <span style="color: #000000;">Paris in 1938.  </span>In November of that year he was shot and mortally wounded by a 17-year-old <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Jew"><span style="color: #0b1480;">Polish Jewish</span></a> youth, <a href="http://www.roizen.com/ron/grynszpan.htm"><span style="color: #0b1480;">Herschel</span><span style="color: #0433ff;">Grynszpan</span></a><span style="color: #000000;">, who had been living in Germany.</span>  Vom Rath was 29 years old.  Ironically, vom Rath had earlier expressed anti-Nazi sympathies, evidently based on the Nazi treatment of Jews, and was under Gestapo investigation at the time for being politically unreliable.  He died of his wounds two days after being shot.  Hitler used the assassination <a href="http://www.holocaustandhumanity.org/kristallnacht/events-leading-up-to-kristallnacht/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">as an excuse to launch Kristallnacht</span></a>, a pogrom against German Jews, shortly after the death.<span style="color: #000000;">   My father attended school with <a href="http://www.roizen.com/ron/grynszpan.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Grynszpan</span></a> and knew him casually; Dad escaped to America by the time of the assassination.</span></p>
<p>Now try to imagine how the Western media would report World War II if they were using the exact same rules of journalism that they apply to the Arab-Israeli conflict.   The assassination of vom Rath by a Jewish youth would be universally held up to illustrate that the German-Jewish conflict was a circle of violence, an ongoing bloody conflict whose roots are so old that no one remembers them, a conflict where each side claims it is retaliating for the violence that the other side perpetrated, a conflict whose causes are all blurred by eons of history.  Sure the Germans were murdering Jews, but then there was the vom Rath assassination, proving the violence was two-directional, symmetric.  Close investigation could probably find a few other examples of Jews using violence against Germans.  Innocent lives are being lost on both sides.  Such senseless tragedy.  Why can&#8217;t both sides just live and let live?</p>
<p>Of course, such a representation of World War II would not only be an absurdity but also an obscenity.   World War II was not about a &#8220;cycle of violence&#8221; between Germans and Jews.  It was unambiguously a campaign of annihilation and oppression of Jews committed by Germans.  The fact that one can identify a handful of outlier events such as the assassination of vom Rath does not convey any symmetry to the &#8220;conflict.&#8221;   Indeed to misrepresent the Nazi campaign of extermination against Jews as some sort of &#8220;symmetric&#8221; pair of movements of violence would be proof that the person so misrepresenting the situation was a Nazi-sympathizer and an anti-Semite.</p>
<p>The Middle East conflict is not a cycle of violence.  It is not a &#8220;symmetric&#8221; campaign of retaliation by Jews against Arabs and Arabs against Jews.  The Middle East conflict is as unambiguously a unidirectional campaign of violence and atrocities as was World War II.  It is about Arabs murdering Jews and not the inverse.  It is about Arabs seeking to deny Jews their human rights and their right to self-determination, and not the inverse.  The Middle East conflict consists of a century of atrocities perpetrated by Arabs against Jews.</p>
<p>But the Western media are willing to go to extreme lengths to force the conflict into the prism of symmetry and the &#8220;cycle of violence&#8221; fantasy.  Several months ago a Palestinian Arab teenager from East Jerusalem, <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/5936#.VIhy7DGUf-o"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Mohammed Abu Khdair, age 17,  was kidnapped and murdered</span></a> by a Jew.  The Jew was mentally ill and believed himself to be the messiah.   He was arrested and jailed by Israel.  The killer did not represent anyone, was not sponsored by anyone, and no one in Israel cheered his crime.  The killing of Abu Khdair came shortly after three Jewish teenagers were murdered by the Hamas in a well-planned operation.  That was an operation sponsored, financed and planned by the Hamas and cheered by most &#8220;Palestinians&#8221; and by many Israeli Arabs.   Many passed around candies in celebration.</p>
<p>Since the death of Abu Khdair, the media have exploited the case to sell their &#8220;symmetry cycle of violence&#8221; snake oil.  True, the &#8220;Palestinians&#8221; murder Jewish children all the time but here we have a single incident of an inverted crime, an Arab teenager murdered by a Jew.  The media obsession is far more than a postman-biting-dog stroke of interest in uncharacteristic news stories.  The media have used the death to manufacture the symmetry fiction and spread it.   After all, if it is symmetric, then both sides are wrong, which means both sides are right, which means there is no right and wrong about which to worry our pretty little heads.</p>
<p>The killing of Abu Khdair was as characteristic of the Middle East conflict as the killing of vom Rath was representative of the events comprising World War II.  And it is hardly the only &#8220;vom Rath anomaly&#8221; that drives the reporting of the anti-Israel media.   This week <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/188478#.VIh7tTGUf-o"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ziad Abu Ein</span></a>, a terrorist murderer serving as a Palestinian Authority &#8220;cabinet minister,&#8221; died from a heart attack after being confronted by Israeli troops.   You see, the media are bleating in unison?  It is not just Palestinians who murder Israelis!</p>
<p>Arabs in the West Bank vandalize Jewish property so often that it is generally never even reported as news, even in the Israeli media, because it is so commonplace.  Arson attacks and vandalism of synagogues by Arabs are so frequent that they rarely make it out of the back pages.  But if a handful of teenage Jewish delinquents vandalize some Arab vehicles or paint graffiti on Arab buildings, not only is this highlighted on the front pages, but it is denounced as evidence of Jewish terrorism.  The media, including the Israeli leftist media, scream that such incidents are hate crimes.  Demands are made to define the graffiti painters as a terrorist organization.</p>
<p>Rock throwing by Arabs at Jews in Israel is even less likely to make it into the press or news or even the social media.   But if Arabs allege that some Jewish &#8220;settlers&#8221; threw some rocks at Arab cars or houses, then stop the presses!   All other news must be removed to page 3.  Arabs in the West bank vandalize Jewish property, including agricultural produce, more frequently than the sun shines in the Middle East.  No one hears about it because it is not considered &#8220;news.&#8221;  After all, dogs chasing postmen are just not very interesting or newsworthy.  But let some Arabs or leftists allege that Jewish &#8220;settlers&#8221; have vandalized some West Bank Arab olive trees and the media shrieks are deafening.  So deafening, in fact, that they drown out reporting about some cases of  Arabs and leftists <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/10/16/did-palestinians-destroy-their-own-olive-trees-and-then-blame-israel-settlers-say-they-have-the-video-to-prove-it/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">intentionally vandalizing</span></a> Arab olive trees as <a href="https://anneinpt.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/slandering-israel-palestinians-and-leftists-filmed-cutting-down-their-own-olive-trees/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">provocations to be blamed</span></a> on &#8220;settlers.&#8221;   And it goes without saying that the firing of thousands of rockets by Gaza terrorists at Israeli civilians is never important enough to be reported as news.  But let Israel fire back at the savages and there &#8211; you see &#8211; we are back in the symmetric cycle of violence.</p>
<p>The symmetry perversion has been played up by the media for so long that few can even keep straight the fundamental underlying truths behind the conflict.  There is a war in the Middle East because the Arabs, controlling territory nearly twice that of the United States (including Alaska), are unwilling for the Jews to control their own state smaller than New Jersey.  The Middle East conflict is not about unwillingness on the part of Jews to accept self-determination for Arabs, but rather by unwillingness on the part of Arabs to accept self-determination for Jews.  Middle East violence is about the campaign of terrorist aggression by the Arab world, including its &#8220;Palestinian&#8221; playthings, to murder as many Jewish children and other civilians as possible.  The number of innocent Palestinian civilians intentionally murdered by Israel is precisely zero.  Palestinians get killed when Israel shoots back and retaliates for Arab terror and aggression and rocket attacks.  When Arabs do not attack Jews, the Jews do not shoot back.  There is no anti-Arab Jewish terrorism.</p>
<p>Arab terrorism is not caused by Israeli &#8220;occupation&#8221; but rather by the removal of Israeli occupation.  The &#8220;Palestinians&#8221; have about as legitimate a claim to statehood and independence as did the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia.   Granting &#8220;Palestinians&#8221; independence will have precisely the same effect as did the granting &#8220;self-determination&#8221; to the Sudeten Germans.  The only reason Arabs demand that the &#8220;Palestinians&#8221; be granted a state is in order to use it to launch an all-out war of annihilation and terror against what would be the rump Israel.</p>
<p>Israel is the only country in the Middle East that is NOT an apartheid regime.  The only Arabs in the Middle East enjoying human rights are those living under Israeli  rule.   The treatment of Arabs by Israel is at least a thousand times better than the treatment of Arabs by Arab regimes.   The &#8220;stateless Palestinians&#8221; are Arabs, and Arabs control 22 states.   No one is stopping any Arabs uncomfortable about living in a Jewish state from moving to any of those 22 states and taking all their assets and wealth with them.  The Middle East conflict is about injustices perpetrated by Arabs against Jews and not the other way around.</p>
<p>None of this belies the possibility that if one seeks hard enough one can find incidents in which some Jews behave badly towards some Arabs.  Just as Hershel Grynszpan may have murdered the wrong German.  But that hardly makes the Middle East conflict a symmetric cycle of violence and injustice.  There was a handful of white slaves owned by slaveholders in the American south before the Civil War and there were <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/03/black_slave_owners_did_they_exist.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">small numbers of black slave-owners</span></a>.   Using that to paint pre-Emancipation slavery as a symmetry of black and white slaves with black and white slave-owners would of course by an obscenity.   Use of the assassination of vom Rath to create fictional symmetry would be even worse.  But nothing can compete with the malicious, repugnant, and perfidious distortion of the Middle East conflict by the media as a symmetric conflict and a cycle of violence.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Netanyahu Springs his Trap</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/netanyahu-springs-his-trap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=netanyahu-springs-his-trap</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2014 05:05:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[break-up]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coalition government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lapid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Likud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246951</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the coalition government in Israel fell apart -- and who will benefit in the next election. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/isr_benjamin_netanyahu_reut_112811_584.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246953" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/isr_benjamin_netanyahu_reut_112811_584-450x340.jpg" alt="Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a Likud party meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem" width="327" height="247" /></a>Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may demonstrate foolishness regarding a great many things in public life, but no one ever accused him of demonstrating foolishness with regard to his own electoral prospects.  His enemies are suddenly foaming at the mouth.  In response to the remarkable jump in Likud popularity in the polls, they claim, Bibi has decided to pull a fast one and has decided to take the undemocratic decision of holding elections.  That Netanyahu&#8217;s rivals claim it is undemocratic when elections are held is only the tip of their problems.  What really has them worried is that the Israeli electorate is about to sic itself against most of the non-Likud parties.</p>
<p>To a large extent, the real factor behind the dismemberment of the government coalition and the calling of new elections is the military operation against Gaza from this past summer.  The events surrounding those battles shook up the Israeli electorate and reshuffled the political deck.</p>
<p>The Gaza war made the Likud very popular.  The Jewish public almost unanimously supported the operation against the Hamas barbarians. Israelis do not think that too many Gazans were killed but rather that too few were.  The main complaint from Israeli Jews was that the Likud did not go far enough and ended the military incursions there too soon.</p>
<p>But the Gaza war also decimated the political base for the Likud&#8217;s opposition.  In Gaza, Israel had carried out to the letter every &#8220;idea&#8221; of the Israeli Labor Party and its allies.  It had evicted the entire Jewish population of Gaza, removed every single Israeli soldier and military asset, turned the area over to the &#8220;Palestinians,&#8221; ending every single vestige of &#8220;occupation.&#8221;  The result was the raining down of thousands of rockets upon the Israeli civilian population fired from Gaza, some hitting Tel Aviv and some landing near the airport, plus the terror tunnels built to carry out large-scale massacres of Jews.  The Hitlerjugend on Western campuses may be marching around chanting that Jews are subhumans whose lives not worthy of being defended and protected, but no one is going to get very far in Israeli politics mouthing such a platform.  The huge bulk of Israelis see the Labor Party and the &#8220;center-Left&#8221; as directly responsible for turning Gaza into one huge rocket launching pad and putting almost the entire Israeli civilian population at risk, all in the name of &#8220;the need to end occupation.&#8221;  Israelis now understand that Arab terrorism is not caused by Israeli occupation but by the ending of Israeli occupation.</p>
<p>That means that everyone knows that at the very first electoral opportunity, the Israeli voter will exact his revenge against those who turned Gaza into Hamastan.  That means the Labor Party and Tzipi Livni&#8217;s &#8220;Tnuah&#8221; party, what is left of the once large Kadima bloc.</p>
<p>So the Labor Party, which in its first decades exercised a monopoly hegemony over Israeli government, is likely to fall in any new election far below the 15 parliamentary seats it managed to hang on to in the last elections (out of 120).</p>
<p>Livni&#8217;s party is what is left from the larger Kadima party that implemented the Gaza capitulation and the conversion of Gaza into ISIS-South.  It managed to get 6 seats in the last election and was invited by Netanyahu to join his coalition.  There Livni herself pursued a leftist agenda within the government coalition.  As Minister of Justice, she appointed far leftist judicial activist court judges.  She also rallied in defense of the Islamofascist terrorist Haneen Zoabi, a Knesset Member from one of the Arab fascist parties, defending her from attempts to indict her for treason and terrorism.  There are serious doubts as to whether Livni&#8217;s party will pass the minimum threshold and even make it into the next Knesset after the election.  The ultra-leftist MERETZ party, with 6 seats at the moment, is also likely to get pummeled in a new election.  Israel bashing is just not a great vote grabber in Israel these days.</p>
<p>They are not the only likely losers from a new election.  The wunderkind of the last election was TV personality Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party.  A bit of a Seinfeldian party, one about nothing, Lapid rode to power by painting himself as the voice of irate middle class Israelis upset at housing prices and determined to end exemptions from military service for religious yeshiva students.  After rising from nothing to 19 seats, Lapid was invited into the coalition and made Minister of Finance, a politically thankless position even for someone who had once taken freshman economics, which Lapid had not.  Determined to do &#8220;something&#8221; as Finance Minister, Lapid introduced a moronic proposal for reducing housing prices by increasing the demand for housing (granting new home buyers exemptions from Value-Added Taxes).   Then in recent months he introduced proposals for rent controls, price controls in some other markets, and boosts in the minimum wage.   Years ago I proposed requiring prospective Ministers of Finance to be able to get a B minus on an exam in Economics 101 and Lapid illustrates what happens when there is no such requirement.</p>
<p>Having delivered nothing, Lapid&#8217;s party will probably lose at least half its electoral strength.  There is a popular Israeli pop song about &#8220;My heart is Racing a New Guy is Coming to the Neighborhood.&#8221;   Well that new guy is Moshe Kahlon.  He is a well-liked good-looking ex-Likud politician with a very bright public image, considered honest and intelligent and clean.  He was the father of the reform and shakeup of the cell phone industry in Israel which resulted in sharp drops in prices for consumers.  He is setting up his own new party, so far unnamed, and it will run as the party of the middle class.  In other words, he will be out-<i>Lapiding </i>Yair Lapid.  His entry onto the stage dooms Lapid to an even sharper decline.</p>
<p>Yisrael Beiteinu, the party of sharp-tongued Russian immigrant strongman and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, is also due to take a drumming.  In the last election, it did not run as a separate party, but rather as part of a merger with the Likud.  So its own electoral popularity was not really put to the test, as it will be this winter.  In the past it managed to draw support from Israeli &#8220;hawks,&#8221; above and beyond its power base among Russian Jewish immigrants to Israel, and was helped by being the party most hated by the Far Left.  But in the last election its ability to attract &#8220;hawks&#8221; was already being undercut by the emergence of Naftali Bennett&#8217;s &#8220;Jewish Home&#8221; party.  And Lieberman has been involved in other shenanigans that are likely to undercut his popularity, such as his leading an anti-democratic campaign to shut down a daily newspaper because its editorial line is pro-Netanyahu.</p>
<p>Naftali Bennett&#8217;s &#8220;Jewish Home&#8221; party was one of the great winners in the last election, winning 12 seats.  He would have likely done even better had not the Likud focused most of its attack ads and energies in the last weeks before the last election on attacking Bennett.   While Bennett and Netanyahu do not like one another at the personal level, and while the party has lost some of its glamour in some missteps and foolish policy positions, particular by Uri Ariel, Minister of Construction, Bennett&#8217;s party is still the only reliably &#8220;hawkish&#8221; party left in the arena and is likely to benefit from the shifts in public sentiment.</p>
<p>The rest of the Knesset is unlikely to change much in the new election.  The religious parties and the Arab fascist parties will probably keep their strength at current levels.  The rump &#8220;Kadima&#8221; party of Shaul Mofaz will go the way of the dodo bird after the election.</p>
<p>The main net effect of the snap elections is likely to be a strengthening of the Israeli &#8220;Right&#8221; based around the Likud and a stronger Likud governmental coalition emerging.</p>
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		<title>Israeli Leftists Demonstrate Solidarity with Dead Terrorist</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Nov 2014 05:30:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab citizens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Khair al-Din Hamdan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terror]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245078</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Jewish State's fifth column and its fellow travelers spring into action. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/pli.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245130" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/pli-450x300.jpg" alt="pli" width="321" height="214" /></a>Khair al-Din Hamdan from Kafr Kanna in the Galilee was an Israeli Arab terrorist who was minding his own business a few days ago and attempting to stab Israeli policemen to death.  Kafr Kanna is where the Biblical town of Cana stood and according to the New Testament it is where Jesus turned water into wine.  The tomb of the great Jewish sage Simeon ben Gamliel is nearby, attesting to the Jewish origins of this town now under Arab occupation.</p>
<p>The intended police victims of the terrorist were not amused and were unappreciative of the symbolic value of their being stabbed to death to protest the grievances of Hamdan and his terrorist comrades.  Instead, the police selfishly and immoderately shot Hamdan to death as Hamdan attempted to murder them with his knife.</p>
<p>Israel&#8217;s Arab fifth-column and its fellow travelers then took to the streets and violently protested this &#8220;murder in cold blood&#8221; of the gentle giant Hamdan. He instantly became the poster boy for those loyal Arab citizens of Israel who seek the annihilation of Israel and its Jews.   The neutral and objective foreign media were also outraged at the violation of the Miranda rights of Hamdan, who was killed by the police without legal representation and a trial.   Khair&#8217;s father <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4589580,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">expressed the outrage</span></a> of the family that his son had been prevented by the police from murdering Jews &#8212; and was not simply stopped with tear gas or at most a bullet in his thigh.  And the heroic appeasers of the Likud government <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11219367/Israel-orders-probe-after-police-kill-Arab-in-cold-blood.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">decided to order an official commission</span></a> of investigation into the interruption by the cops of the murder attempt by Khair.</p>
<p>At the same time, some of Israel&#8217;s finest leftists are also taking to the airwaves and the streets to show their solidarity with the young dead terrorist. The Khair lobby claims that video footage shows that, after attempting unsuccessfully to stab the cops, he was in fact backing away from them when he was shot.  Just why his backing away could be interpreted as any reason NOT to summarily shoot and execute him on the spot with extreme prejudice has never been explained by anyone.</p>
<p>Some of the car crash murderers in Israel in recent days have been shot on the spot AFTER crashing intentionally into people.  The only thing wrong with that is that Israel&#8217;s weenie government refuses to pass a law proclaiming that instant execution without trial of ALL terrorists at the scenes of their murders and attempted murders is not only legal but downright laudatory and deserving of a medal of valor.</p>
<p>The emerging leading Jewish leader of the Khair lobby is a Knesset Member from the anti-Israel semi-Marxist MERETZ Knesset Faction, loosely associated with the anti-democratic protest movement &#8220;Peace Now.&#8221;  She is Tamar Zandberg.   She decided to go in person to Kafr Kanna to show her solidarity with the poor innocent victim Khair, a bit like all those demagogues in America making <i>hajj</i> to Fergusan, Missouri to show their solidarity with the violent thug shot there by police.</p>
<p>Sister Zandberg&#8217;s participation in the Salute to Terrorists with Knives event at Kafr Kanna is relayed by herself in Hebrew on her Facebook page.  She also posts a photo of herself without chador sitting on the protest podium with assorted Arab members of the Khair lobby.</p>
<p>Here is my translation of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tamarzandberg"><span style="color: #0433ff;">what she posts there</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;I visited today in Kafr Kanna, the town in which Khair Hamdan was shot to death.  I went together with Knesset Member Issawi Freij (also from Meretz).  We expressed our solidarity with the feelings of injustice that an entire community feels today, not only because of the excessively light finger on the trigger (by the police), not only because of the fact that the photographs of the event raise serious doubts about the legality of the police actions and the suspicions of an attempt to cover them up, but also because of our recognition that this is NOT an isolated disconnected incident.  It is instead part of the policy of racist discrimination directed against the Arab minority in Israel, a policy directed and implemented from on high by the Prime Minister and his cabinet.</p>
<p style="color: #141923;">While one minister speaks about &#8216;a terrorist&#8217; and another speaks about &#8216;terrorism,&#8217; while the Prime Minister himself raises the possibility of stripping citizens of their citizenship, they are not just commenting on a controversial (<i>sic</i>) incident but rather they are outlining their policy against the Israeli Arab public.</p>
<p style="color: #141923;">This government of intimidation and incitement has now reached new heights of hatemongering.  Its own obstinacy is what manufactured the confrontation whose climax was seen in the Gaza war this past summer.  It has driven Israel&#8217;s international reputation down to a new low.  This same government now paints 20% of the country&#8217;s population as the enemy.  I cannot escape the feeling that this is part of a grand governmental plan of organized destruction against any hope for a better future.  (The word &#8216;destruction&#8217; she uses in Hebrew is the same as the word for &#8216;terrorism&#8217; – SP.) &#8220;</p>
</blockquote>
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		<title>ISIS and Why the Left Was Wrong About the Golan Heights</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/isis-and-why-the-left-was-wrong-about-the-golan-heights/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=isis-and-why-the-left-was-wrong-about-the-golan-heights</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Oct 2014 04:10:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Golan Heights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sea of Galilee]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243418</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How a rejected land deal with Assad spared Israel from another terrorist hotbed on its doorstep. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/132363524_21n.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243423" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/132363524_21n-450x310.jpg" alt="132363524_21n" width="334" height="230" /></a>It is truly maddening to consider how close Israel came to turning the Golan Heights over to Syria in the year 2000 and how close Israel came to having hordes of ISIS terrorists sitting smack on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, directly across from Tiberias.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the year 2000 the Israeli Labor Party ruled the country and Ehud Barak was Prime Minister.  Negotiations were being conducted about a complete and total Israeli &#8220;withdrawal&#8221; from the Golan Heights.   The Syrian border would have moved to the shores of the Sea of Galilee and Syria would have been granted water rights to the Kinneret.  This took place under the coaxing of Barak&#8217;s party&#8217;s &#8220;doves&#8221; and especially Itamar Rabinovich, a past president of Tel Aviv University, a relative of Yitzhak Rabin, and an ex-Ambassador to the US. Rabinovich saw himself as some sort of authority on Syria and led the Labor-Left&#8217;s campaign to strike a deal-at-any-cost with Syria.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Israel in fact did offer Syria the entire Golan Heights, only to find that the Syrians were demanding MORE than that.  In what can only have been a divinely decreed miracle, the deal did not go through.  Like with Pharoah, the Assad dictator&#8217;s heart was hardened mysteriously, and he failed to grab the prize when it was proffered.  <a href="http://mondediplo.com/2000/01/02gresh">Here</a> is the Le Monde report on what appeared in 2000 to be an imminent &#8220;peace agreement.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In reality, of course, Assad was offered everything including the kitchen sink. Since then the Israeli Left has invented a new pseudo-history of this episode, claiming Barak was in fact holding back and not making &#8220;enough&#8221; concessions to Assad.  After all, Barak failed to offer Assad all of Rabinovich&#8217;s Tel Aviv University.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">To read the opinion pieces and speeches in Israel from the 1999-2000 era of negotiations with Assad is to enter the Twilight Zone.  One after the other, these people hectored and browbeat the Israeli public about what a wonderful and unique historic opportunity this was. All Israel had to do was to surrender to all of Assad&#8217;s demands. Moreover, time was of the essence. Every second that passed without a capitulation deal to Syria would see Israel&#8217;s situation worsen and would produce existential dangers for Israel. Some of these pseudo-analyses and predictions were re-published over the past weekend by Haggai Segel in Makor Rishon, and reading them is truly eye-opening.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At the time I did my own small part to belay the catastrophe being planned by Rabinovich and Barak.  I published<a href="http://www.meforum.org/476/the-collapsing-syrian-economy"> this</a> article in 1999 in the Middle East Quarterly.  In it I argued that not only was time not pressing for a deal with Syria, but time was very much running AGAINST Syria, because the Syrian economy was deep in the depths of implosion. Hence Israel could only benefit from stalling any attempt at reaching a deal with Syria.  Say what you wish about the myopia of economists, but THIS prediction turned out to be right smack dab on the money.  Syria indeed collapsed, and not only economically.  The article at the time gained enormous attention and excerpts ran in the Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">When Assad hardened his Pharoah&#8217;s heart and rescued Israel, the drama did not end.  During the next decade or so, swarms of Israeli leftists from the Labor Party and elsewhere tried to reconstruct the &#8220;deal&#8221; that Ehud Barak almost signed, demanding that Israel; enter negotiations with Syria from the last negotiation position by Barak.  In other words, start with Barak&#8217;s last offer of total capitulationas the starting point  and then negotiate NEW additional concessions to Syria from there.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It should be noted, by the way, that at this point the Golan Heights have been part of the state of Israel for more than twice as long as they were ever part of the state of Syria before 1967.   If it had been all up to the Israeli Labor Party, ISIS terrorists would be today encamped on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and sending out murder parties each evening into the Galilee in rowboats and rafts.   Israel was spared this fate not because of any serendipitous dose of common sense by its leaders, but thanks to the miracle of the Pharaoh-like hardening of the heart of the Assad beast.</p>
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		<title>Recognizing a Terror State</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/recognizing-a-terror-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=recognizing-a-terror-state</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 04:41:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace Now]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[petition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recognition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Statehood]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[European governments and the Israeli Left collaborate to subvert Israeli sovereignty. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/palestinians_jrl109_l1h5k_16298.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243090" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/palestinians_jrl109_l1h5k_16298.jpg" alt="palestinians_jrl109_l1h5k_16298" width="369" height="245" /></a>So let us see if we have this straight.  The <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4580307,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">British parliament decides</span></a> to &#8220;recognize&#8221; the &#8220;state&#8221; of &#8220;Palestine.&#8221;    It thus reverts to exactly the same displays of courage and integrity that it showed back when Britain recognized the right to self-determination of the Sudeten Germans in 1938.   All this from Britain, the occupier of Gibraltar, the Falklands, Wales, Scotland, Ulster, and the Channel Islands.   The Brits are  <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.619073"><span style="color: #0433ff;">joined by Sweden</span></a> in a similar belch of &#8220;recognition.&#8221;  You remember Sweden, the country that was too cowardly to choose a side in either World War and that provided iron ore to feed Hitler&#8217;s war machine.  Yes, Sweden, which refuses to recognize the rights to self-determination of its own Samis, and whose journalists recycle medieval blood libels about Jews murdering gentiles and selling their body parts.   Other European countries are expected to follow.  Why &#8220;Palestine&#8221; is any more worthy of being &#8220;recognized&#8221; than ISIS, another terrorist gang claiming to be a state seeking &#8220;recognition,&#8221; is never explained.</p>
<p>Now an interesting twist to the story is the demonstration of the Israeli Radical Left of its contempt for democracy and for Israeli sovereignty.  The Israeli Left, led by the tenured leftists, is willing to endorse pretty much anything that is harmful to its own country.  It has been urging European countries to &#8220;recognize the state of Palestine.&#8221;   A <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/Petitions%2520-%2520Goldblum%2520and%2520Liel%2520Joined%2520by%2520Israeli%2520Academic%2520Slacktivists.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">petition was signed</span></a> by dozens of Israel&#8217;s most anti-Israel academics, plus some non-academic members of the Hamas Lobby.  It was organized by Amiram Goldblum from the Hebrew University, a founder of the extremist anti-Israel &#8220;Peace Now&#8221; organization, and Alon Liel, an ex-diplomat who now teaches for some reason at Tel Aviv University.  These two were earlier among the initiators and organizers of a notorious pseudo-poll that claimed falsely to show that Israeli Jews favor &#8220;apartheid.&#8221;   That &#8220;poll&#8221; last year was an exercise in distortion and <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/10/30/the-haaretz-poll-travesty-nif-funding-and-the-durban-strategy/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">tendentious manipulation</span></a>, designed to generate misleading &#8220;statistics.&#8221;  It <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2794"><span style="color: #0433ff;">was thoroughly discredited</span></a> by serious social scientists.</p>
<p>Now the same &#8220;Israel is an Apartheid Regime&#8221; propaganda team is back, rallying the rest of the anti-Israel academic Left to attempt to bypass and neutralize Israeli sovereignty.   Their initiative also reflects the utter contempt and disdain that Leftists in Israel have for democracy.</p>
<p>No one is stopping the Radical Left in Israel from peddling its ideological wares in the marketplace of public opinion.  In fact the Radical Left exercises unchallenged control over two of Israel&#8217;s daily newspapers and also dominates all of the television and radio broadcasts.   The problem is that it has been a dramatic failure.  Its anti-Israel lobbying has fallen flat on its face.  The public simply repudiates the Left&#8217;s agenda.  Treason just has not proved to be the grand vote grabber that the Left expected.   Certainly since the outbreak of the recent battles in Gaza, almost no one in Israel still favors the so-called &#8220;Two State Solution.&#8221;  Almost no one is willing to see Israel &#8220;withdraw&#8221; from the West Bank and allow a Palestinian terror state to operate there.  Almost no one is willing to reward Hamas with &#8220;concessions.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Left understands that its &#8220;ideas&#8221; have been rejected by nearly the entire Israeli political spectrum.  Since it is incapable of persuading Israelis of the correctness of its agenda, it has decided instead to recruit foreign powers to &#8220;do the job&#8221; for it and bully Israel.  It demands that foreign countries and organizations hostile to Israel coerce the Jewish country into adopting the very political platform favored by the Left that is rejected by perhaps 97% of Israelis.</p>
<p>Goldblum, the organizer of <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/Petitions%2520-%2520Goldblum%2520and%2520Liel%2520Spur%2520the%2520Brits%2520to%2520Recognize%2520Arab%2520State.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the petition</span></a> calling for European recognition of the &#8220;state of Palestine,&#8221; has a long track record of calling for Europeans to suppress and override Israeli sovereignty and <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/HebrewU%2520-%2520Amiram%2520Goldblum%2520-%2520Calls%2520to%2520Undermine%2520Israeli%2520Democracy.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">impose policies upon Israel from without</span></a> opposed by the bulk of Israelis.   In a notorious speech before an assembly of leftists in May 2012, Goldblum was quoted as calling upon Israel&#8217;s Left to stop wasting its time attempting to persuade the general public to embrace its political agenda, evidently because it is clear that the public will never do so.  Goldblum said he has no interest in the Israeli electorate and general public and called upon the radical Left to go directly to political groups abroad, outside of Israel, and recruit them as pressure groups to coerce Israel into accepting the agenda of the Israeli Left.</p>
<p><a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/Petitions%2520-%2520Goldblum%2520and%2520Liel%2520Joined%2520by%2520Israeli%2520Academic%2520Slacktivists.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">His comrades in Petitiongate</span></a> are not very different.  Among the signers calling on Europeans to &#8220;recognize Palestine&#8221; are Shlomo Sand, the pseudo-historian from Tel Aviv University who is the most openly anti-Semitic &#8220;academic&#8221; in Israel, Oren Yiftachel, who has built an &#8220;academic&#8221; career by asserting that Israel is an apartheid regime, plus a gaggle of card-carrying communists, tenured anti-Semites, and Hamas aficionados.  The presence of such people on the faculties of Israeli universities tells you pretty much all you need to know about the state of academic standards here.</p>
<p>The only thing the signers of the petition detest more than their own country is freedom of speech.  The Israeli far Left is a fascist movement that ferociously opposes not only Israeli sovereignty but also democracy and freedom of speech for non-leftists.   Critics of leftists must be silenced and indicted, insist the Far Leftists, because the exercise of freedom of speech by non-leftists produces violence and it is a clear and present danger.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the number of Tenured Leftists <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/other%2520-%2520Betzalel%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520Zvi%2520Elhayani%2520-%2520Calls%2520for%2520Murder%2520of%2520Jews.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">openly calling for violence</span></a> and <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/Israeli%2520extremism%2520-%2520Leftist%2520Fascist%2520Academics%2520Exempt%2520from%2520Prosecution.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">murder</span></a> grows.  The leftist Attorney General <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/BGU%2520-%2520Eyal%2520Nir%2520-%2520no%2520indictment%2520for%2520Inciting%2520to%2520Murder.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">never prosecutes such people</span></a> for their <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/BGU%2520-%2520Eyal%2520Nir%2520-%2520no%2520indictment%2520for%2520Inciting%2520to%2520Murder.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">calls to murder</span></a>.  They are just engaged in protected speech, you see, unlike Rabbis who write controversial books or Non-Leftist protesters expressing their opinions boisterously.  Many of the tenured extremists seek to suppress academic freedom for Non-Leftists, especially for critics of the Left, and also freedom of speech.  Goldblum, the initiator of the petition for &#8220;recognition of the State of Palestine,&#8221; <a href="http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/israels-institutions-of-lowly-education-ruth-king.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">has a long track record</span></a> of filing anti-democratic harassment SLAPP suits against those who disagree with his extremist opinions.   Ben Dror Yemini, a Dean of Israeli journalism, <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/HebrewU%2520-%2520Amiram%2520Goldblum%2520-%2520anti-democratic%2520extremist.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">has denounced Goldblum</span></a> as an anti-democratic fanatic.</p>
<p>The Israeli signers of the petition calling upon European countries and others to negate Israeli sovereignty and to &#8220;recognize&#8221; the &#8220;state&#8221; of &#8220;Palestine&#8221; not only hate their own country, but they also hate basic democracy and human freedoms.   &#8220;Peace Now,&#8221; whose name in Hebrew is Shalom Achshav, should change its name to SHISIS = Subverters and Harassers of Israel and of Israelis.   It may yet merge with ISIS.  Its head should be renamed the Grand Israeli Scheisskopf.</p>
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		<title>Israeli Leftist Demands Journalist Be Murdered for Mocking the Left</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/israeli-leftist-demands-journalist-be-murdered-for-mocking-the-left/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israeli-leftist-demands-journalist-be-murdered-for-mocking-the-left</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Sep 2014 04:04:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Alona Kimche]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Tuvia Tenenbom]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The true face of left-wing "tolerance" in the Jewish State. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #37404e;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/alonakimhi.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-240437" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/alonakimhi.jpg" alt="alonakimhi" width="293" height="202" /></a>The Israeli media have been buzzing about the delicious story of Tuvia Tenenbom and his expose of the shenanigans of the radical Left operating in the West Bank.  Tenenbom is a multilingual journalist and play-write. </span>He is well known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvia_Tenenbom"><span style="color: #0433ff;">founder of the Jewish Theater</span></a> in New York.  Passing himself off as a clueless leftist German reporter, he allowed himself to be hosted by various far-Leftist propaganda groups operating in the West Bank, supposedly &#8220;aiding&#8221; Palestinians.  <a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/guest-blog/the-rabbi-and-the-wizz/2014/09/03/2/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">He wrote his experiences up in</span></a> a delightful book called &#8220;Catch the Jew,&#8221; in Hebrew only for now (but in the process of being translated into English).</p>
<p>Much of the stories concern the anti-Israel NGO calling itself &#8220;Rabbis for Human Rights&#8221; run by Arik Ascherman, who claims to have Reform synagogue &#8220;ordination&#8221; together with his wife.  Ascherman has long been a bit of a laughingstock but comes over in the book like the Fourth Stooge.  Arabs working for Ascherman took Tenenbom to see how IDF soldiers harass and shoot poor Palestinians but all they could find was a soldier relieving himself behind a bush.   Others took Tenenbom to Yad Vashem and explained to him that the entire Holocaust is a hoax that never happened.    Excerpts from the book and articles describing Tenenbom&#8217;s experiences have filled the Israeli media and web the past couple of weeks.   Israelis have not laughed so hard <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183718"><span style="color: #0433ff;">since the Hamas issued its battle song</span></a> in Hebrew.</p>
<p style="color: #37404e;">Well, now there is a new twist on this story.  It involves a well-known Israeli leftist named Alona Kimche.  She is an Israeli author, song writer, and actress.  She made the news a couple of years back when she composed a malicious song about Israeli soldiers, accusing them of sadistic mistreatment of &#8220;Palestinians.&#8221;  The Israeli army radio station decided not to play the song, upsetting the radical Left.  Here are a few excerpts from it:</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>Chorus</i>: Learning to kill is a matter of a push<br />
It begins with something small, then it comes easier</p>
<p>Patrolling all night in the Nablus casbah<br />
Hey, what here is ours and what’s yours<br />
The beginning is an experiment<br />
A rifle butt banging on the door<br />
Fearful children, a terrified family<br />
Then a closure, there’s already danger<br />
…They aren’t men or women<br />
They’re only things and shadow<br />
Learning to kill is a matter of routine.</p>
<p>…Learning cruelty is a matter of a push<br />
It begins with something small, and then gets easier<br />
Every boy is a man thirsting for conquests<br />
Hands behind the head, feet spread apart<br />
It’s a time of danger, a time of terror<br />
A soldier who weakens isn’t worthy of mercy<br />
Your cousin is like an animal<br />
He’s used to seeing blood.<br />
He doesn’t feel any pain<br />
He’s not a human being.<br />
A field uniform, a jock itch, fragility and routine.<br />
The distance between stupidity and evil is short.<br />
The land of Israel is ours and ours alone<br />
Learning cruelty is a matter of habit.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Left denounced the army radio&#8217;s refusal to play this jock itch song as &#8220;McCarthyism.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #37404e;">Kimche is active in and was on the Knesset election slate of the tiny semi-Marxist Meretz party, expected to disappear from parliament after the next election.  She is <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-authors-come-to-aid-of-embattled-palestinian-villagers/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">active in various other leftist</span></a> causes.</p>
<p style="color: #37404e;">Kimche was not amused by Tenenbom&#8217;s showing up the Far Left as a gang of circus clowns.  As <a href="http://www.srugim.co.il/88819-%25D7%2590%25D7%259C%25D7%2595%25D7%25A0%25D7%2594-%25D7%25A7%25D7%259E%25D7%2597%25D7%2599-%25D7%259E%25D7%25A1%25D7%2599%25D7%25AA%25D7%2594-%25D7%259C%25D7%25A8%25D7%25A6%25D7%2597-%25D7%2598%25D7%2595%25D7%2591%25D7%2599%25D7%2594-%25D7%2598%25D7%25A0%25D7%25A0%25D7%2591%25D7%2590%25D7%2595%25D7%259D"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reported</span></a> by <a href="http://www.jerusalemonline.com/news/in-israel/local/did-an-author-incite-the-murder-of-a-journalist-7902"><span style="color: #0433ff;">various news media in Israel</span></a>, on her Facebook page she issued a call for Tenenbom to be murdered.   She said he should be burned at the stake for his &#8220;crime&#8221; of mocking the Left, and she added that she knows some shadowy friends of hers in Lod who &#8220;would be happy to do the deed.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #37404e;">The radical Left in Israel loves to whine about being victimized by the political Right.  Just this week there is a petition being circulated that denounces &#8220;acts of violence against leftists by rightists&#8221; in Israel during the recent Gaza military operations.  The petition refers to cases where communists, radical Arabs and others held anti-Israel solidarity-with-the-Hamas rallies, and passing by Israelis cursed at them and maybe threw some things at them.   Dozens of prominent leftists endorse and cheer on terrorist attacks against Israelis.  A <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/other%2520-%2520Betzalel%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520Zvi%2520Elhayani%2520-%2520Calls%2520for%2520Murder%2520of%2520Jews.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">number of leftist professors</span></a> have openly <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/Israeli%2520extremism%2520-%2520Leftist%2520Fascist%2520Academics%2520Exempt%2520from%2520Prosecution.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">demanded that rightists be murdered</span></a>.  But the petitioners have no interest in any of that.</p>
<p>Now in Israel it is supposed to be against the law to call for someone to be murdered.  The problem is that leftists who openly call for people to be murdered are <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%2520level%2520pages/BGU%2520-%2520Eyal%2520Nir%2520-%2520no%2520indictment%2520for%2520Inciting%2520to%2520Murder.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">never prosecuted</span></a> by the leftist Attorney General.  Non-leftists can be arrested and indicted for things like saying they think Jewish women should only date Jewish men, or for wearing a tee shirt that reads &#8220;Without Loyalty there Can be no Citizenship.&#8221;   A number of people have demanded that Kimche be indicted, but there is little chance of that happening.  Hers is protected speech in Israel, unlike that of  rabbis who write controversial books about <i>halakhic</i> principles.</p>
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		<title>40 Lessons from Hamas&#8217; War Against the Jews</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/40-lessons-from-hamas-war-against-the-jews/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=40-lessons-from-hamas-war-against-the-jews</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/40-lessons-from-hamas-war-against-the-jews/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:41:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239774</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The hard truths the Jewish State must internalize if it wants to prevail.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="color: #222222;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239776" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas2.jpg" alt="hamas" width="339" height="254" /></a>1.      Nice fences do not stop missiles, rockets, and mortars.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">2.      Complete removal of Israeli forces and Jewish settlers from an area merely signals Israeli weakness and invites escalated Arab terror and aggression.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">3.      Hamas (and Hezb&#8217;Allah and ISIS) cannot be defeated with air strikes.  There is no effective alternative to ground invasion and ongoing military control of the ground retaken.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">4.      Unless the Israeli military controls the ground on the other side of fences, those fences achieve nothing.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">5.      Goodwill gestures by Israel increase terror.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">6.      Goodwill gestures by Israel never produce moderation of Arab goals and demands.  They also do not win Israel friends in the West but rather encourage outbursts of anti-Semitism.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">7.      Terror is not caused by Israeli settlements but by the removal of Israeli settlements.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">8.      Terror is not caused by Israeli military occupation but by the removal of Israeli military occupation.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">9.      It is impossible for two sovereign entities to exist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">10.      No matter how many concessions Israel makes, the world will always justify Arab terrorism because there will always be still one more capitulation Israel failed to make.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">11.      No matter how nice Israel is to its own Arab citizens and no matter how many affirmative action programs it implements, Israel will always be accused of being an &#8220;apartheid regime.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">12.      The Israeli far left is an openly anti-Semitic movement that seeks Israel&#8217;s destruction and automatically endorses the enemies of Israel in nearly all things.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">13.     The Likud is too cowardly to defeat the terrorists.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">14.       The real enemy of Israel is not Arab fascism but Jewish leftism.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">15.       Much of the world has no qualms about seeing Jewish civilians murdered by terrorists.  In fact it celebrates these Jewish deaths and complains that there are too few of them.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">16.       The Israeli Left will oppose every conceivable act of Israeli self-defense.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">17.       Israeli niceness and flexibility fan anti-Semitism.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">18.       Arab terrorists do not morph into statesmen.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">19.       Israel bashers do not care about dead Arab civilians, other than as a useful tool with which to bludgeon Israel.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">20.      Many on the worldwide Left would not raise an eyebrow if Israeli Jews were shipped off to concentration camps in cattle cars – except perhaps to demand improved rail service.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">21.      The vast majority of Israeli Arabs and nearly all Israeli Arab politicians support terrorism and wish to see Israel destroyed.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">22.      There are hundreds of Jewish professors in Israel who serve as an academic Fifth Column and who collaborate with the enemies of their country.  They are the moral equivalent of American and British jihadis who fight for the ISIS.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">23.      The Arabs will not accept an independent Israel within any set of borders, no matter how small. Hence reducing Israel&#8217;s territory does nothing but signal weakness and destructibility.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">24.      The only country on earth expected to respond to the mass murder of its civilians by turning of the other cheek is Israel.  The only country on earth that has spent years trying to defeat aggression and terrorism by turning the other cheek is Israel.  It failed.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">25.      No matter how Israel responds to aggression and terrorism, it will always be denounced as a &#8220;disproportionate&#8221; response.  The only &#8220;proportionate&#8221; response is complete capitulation by Israel.  If an Israeli coughs in the general direction of Gaza, this would be a disproportionate war crime and act of genocide.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">26.      Those who claim that anti-Zionism is different and distinct from anti-Semitism tend, on close inspection, to be anti-Semites themselves.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">27.      The only people on earth whom the Left believes should be denied the right to self-determination and self-defense are the Jews.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">28.      &#8220;Palestinians&#8221; are not a nation in any true sense of the term and never were. They are simply Arabs who happened to migrate or infiltrate into Western Palestine.  They have no &#8220;right&#8221; to statehood.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">29.      Israeli leftists, rather than learn from the failures of their policies and &#8220;ideas,&#8221; will always complain that their policies have not been applied thoroughly enough.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">30.      The moral and legal responsibility for every single Arab civilian killed or injured in the Middle East conflict rests squarely on the shoulders of the Arab terrorists and their Western amen choruses.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">31.      There is no moral or legal reason for Israel to refrain from attacking terrorists and murderers when they hide among civilians.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">32.     Israel is the only country in the Middle East that is NOT an apartheid regime.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">33.      Palestinians are the Sudeten Germans of the Middle East.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">34.      There are no non-military solutions to the problem of terrorism.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">35.       One can only make peace with one&#8217;s defeated enemies.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">36.      There are no significant differences between the agenda of the PLO and the agenda of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Moslem Brotherhood, and ISIS.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">37.      One cannot make peace by pretending that war does not exist.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">38.      One cannot buy off anti-Semites and Islamofascists with trade concessions and subsidies.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">39.       The only way to stop terrorism is to kill terrorists.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">40.       No terrorist has ever murdered anyone after he was executed.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Hamas: The Terror Elite</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/hamas-the-terror-elite-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hamas-the-terror-elite-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Aug 2014 04:45:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genocide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PLO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[talks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238370</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Revealing the truth about a genocidal death cult. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Screen-Shot-2014-08-11-at-4.14.32-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238372" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Screen-Shot-2014-08-11-at-4.14.32-PM-273x350.png" alt="hamas" width="202" height="259" /></a></b><em>To order the following Freedom Center pamphlet written by Steven Plaut, &#8220;Hamas: The Terror Elite,&#8221; click <a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/collections/pamplets/products/hamas-the-terror-elite">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><b>“We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity”</b></p>
<p>&#8212; Hamas leader Fathi Hammad in Gaza, January 2, 2009</p>
<p><b>“The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine.”</b></p>
<p>&#8212; Hamas cleric Muhsen Abu ‘Ita in a televised interview, cited in <i>TheWall Street Journal</i>, Dec 30, 08</p>
<p>A new fever has seized the media and the governments of some Western democratic countries— a belief that the world must now hold “talks” with Hamas and seek to reach an “accommodation” with this terrorist group.</p>
<p>Hamas itself has been campaigning1 to be recognized as a legitimate governing body and removed from Western blacklists of terrorist movements. A number of European countries have already responded enthusiastically, thus becoming ventriloquist dummies for the far left, which long ago replaced PLO with the Hamas as the group it considers to be the “legitimate” representative of the Palestinian “people.”</p>
<p>Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Portuguese Jose Saramago (already on record as having compared Israel to Nazi Germany), recently led a petition of hundreds of European and other “intellectuals” demanding that Hamas be delisted as a terrorist organization. 2 Some Eurocrats, while acknowledging that Hamas is indeed involved in terrorism, have still insisted3 that it be “recognized” as a legitimate player and removed from terrorism lists so that it can be “engaged.” Edward McMillan-Scott, a Conservative Member of British Parliament, recently said: “The European Union is right to demand the renunciation by Hamas of violence, and to demand that Hamas recognize Israel. But Europe also has to note that Hamas has stuck to a ceasefire since February 2005.” Eight thousand rockets aimed at Jewish civilians do not count as violating any ceasefire in McMillan-Scott’s opinion. The conservative (and anti-Semitic) BBSNEWS service has editorialized that the continuing regard of the Hamas as a terrorist organization “is probably THE most serious obstacle to peace [emphasis in original].”</p>
<p>France has already conducted “talks” with Hamas,4 in which the terror group has been required to repudiate and concede nothing at all. American officials responded, “We don’t believe it is helpful to the process of bringing peace to the region.” Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi called for negotiating with Hamas5 to help the movement “develop politically.” Some British politicians chimed in with a solemn amen, including Tony Blair.6 A House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report recommended that lawmakers “urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas.” This of course makes exactly as much sense as seeking an accommodation with the moderate elements within al-Qaeda. Some have argued that EU dealings with Hamas themselves constitute a war crime.7 Ironically, members of the PLO have strongly denounced those Europeans calling for dialogue with its rival, which has now replaced Fatah in their affections.</p>
<p>Nor is the EU content with merely talking. As journalist Caroline Glick writes,8 “&#8230; During the period when they were deployed at the [Rafah] terminal, the EU monitors turned a blind eye to the very terror traffic they were supposed to be preventing. At the same time, they condemned Israel for taking any action to defend itself and downplayed the threat Hamas constitutes for Israel. In short, the EU monitors sided with Hamas against Israel at every turn. The situation is much the same with UNIFIL forces in Lebanon.”</p>
<p>The tenured left in the United States has followed its European allies into embracing Hamas. Ostensibly devoted to secularist socialism, the left cheers the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Hamas as the “genuine” and “authentic” representative of Palestinian opinion. Hamas banners now appear everywhere in “peace” demonstrations in Europe and North America. Leftists openly endorse the Hamas charter, whose central premise is that Israel must be annihilated.</p>
<p>Hamas has become the epitome of radical chic on U.S. campuses. Noam Chomsky has been insisting that Hamas is more seriously interested in peace than is Israel.9 Former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Stanford’s Joel Beinin, has criticized the Ford Foundation for <i>not </i>financing Hamas NGOs.10 Hamas, for its part, refuses to recognize or conduct any talks at all with Jews, even with the leftists in Israeli universities who ape the positions taken by Chomsky, Howard Zinn and other radical American academics.</p>
<p>The attitude of the new American administration appears ambiguous. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently ruled out any American negotiations with the Hamas, but then added an ominous afterthought: “unless it meets certain conditions.”11 Thus she took the first step towards joining the long list of Western diplomats who have backtracked and birdwalked over the past decade. These have methodically dumbed down the changes that Palestinian terrorists must make and the demands they must meet before being proclaimed “statesmen.” Nor is Clinton alone in her incipient revisionism about Hamas. John Kerry, who now heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently paid a high profile visit to the Gaza’s Hamastan, and reportedly carried back a note from the terror organization for President Obama’s eyes only.12</p>
<p>Other Americans have been far less cautious about courting Hamas. Ex-President Jimmy Carter has been one of the leading public figures promoting official recognition of the group. He traveled to Damascus to meet with terrorist chiefs, including Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas leader. The Bush administration repudiated his efforts,13 as did U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Hillary Clinton’s top Jewish advisor:</p>
<p>“A meeting with the former President of the United States lends credibility to terrorists and Holocaust deniers worldwide. In light of Hamas’ continuing violence and calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, I strongly urge President Carter to reconsider his decision.”</p>
<p>Carter’s pandering to Hamas is not reciprocal. In Hamas leaflets, the organization has expressed its opposition to every possible peace plan that has ever been proposed by anyone.14 In its leaflet #46 (September 1989) it rejected Egypt’s ten-point peace plan and warned Palestinians against any contact at all with the United States. In its leaflet #55 (March 1990) it threatened other Palestinian figures who had met with former U.S. President Carter, and warned threateningly that those trying to revive the Camp David accords do not represent the Palestinian people. A bit more recently, Hamas ruled out any sort of permanent truce with Israel, other than brief ceasefires that can give it time to re- arm.15 “The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd,” the terror organization writes in one of its advisories that provide talking points for Western media and politicians. “They absolve the aggressor and occupier &#8211; armed with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction &#8211; of responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied.”16</p>
<p><b>What is Hamas?</b></p>
<p>The word Hamas is an acronym for the Arabic words for “Islamic Resistance Movement.” The organization is an Islamofascist terrorist group, responsible for most of the rocket terrorist attacks on civilians in Israel’s south in recent years. Those attacks triggered Israel’s Operation Cast Lead this past winter. It is estimated that 8000 rockets were fired before Israel at last retaliated.</p>
<p>Hamas is probably the most active Arab terrorist organization in recruiting and dispatching suicide-bombers against Jews. Hamas has converted murder-by-suicide into its highest religious value and goal. The first Hamas suicide bombing took place in Israel in April 1993. Thousands of Hamas terrorists train in Iran.</p>
<p>The Hamas “military” wing calls itself the Izz ad-Din al- Qassam brigades, named after an early Palestinian terrorist, killed by the British Mandatory government troops back when “Palestine” was governed by Britain. The Qassam rocket, the weapon of terror most favored by the Hamas, is also named after that terrorist. Al-Qassam was the sidekick of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, at the time Hitler’s chief agent in the Middle East.17</p>
<p>Hamas is officially funded by Islamic fascist groups, by Arab governments, by Iran and Syria, and by “Islamic charities” fromaroundtheworld.18 (TheBushadministrationfamously cracked down on some of these “charities,” including the so- called “Holy Land Foundation.) Hamas steals considerable portions of the aid provided to the Gaza Strip by the EU, the US, the UN, and by others.19 In some cases it then sells the material back to ordinary Gazans for a profit.</p>
<p>Hamas grew out of the Palestinian wing of the violent fundamentalist Islamist movement calling itself the Muslim Brotherhood.20 The latter operated throughout the Muslim world, but was especially strong in Egypt, where it was launched in the 1920s. The Brotherhood served as an anti- British pro-Nazi terror group in Egypt and elsewhere during World War II. It terrorized the Jewish population of Egypt and in other Arab countries. It assassinated Anwar Sadat in 1981 for daring to sign a peace accord with Israel. It had earlier tried to assassinate Gamal Nasser for not being sufficiently anti-West and anti-Israel for their tastes. The Muslim Brotherhood regularly attacks non-Muslim tourists visiting Egypt and justifies any murder of non-Muslims by Muslims anywhere in the name of jihad.</p>
<p>Groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, now outlawed in Egypt, have operated in the United States since 1960.21 Some of these have ties with al-Qaeda. One of the Brotherhood websites blames the 911 attacks in the US on the Jews. 22</p>
<p>Yassir Arafat joined the Brotherhood as a student at an Egyptian university. His Fatah organization, the main group within the PLO, also was built up initially as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and as an Islamist movement. (The word “Fat’h” means holy crusade for Islam.)</p>
<p>In 1973 a Muslim clergyman named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin established <i>al-Mujamma’ al-Islami </i>(the Islamic Center) as the main Muslim Brotherhood movement in Gaza. In December, 1987, the same Yassin, who was later executed by Israel, founded Hamas as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Gazan political arm. A different segment of the Muslim Brotherhood broke away to form the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, an ally of Hamas, in the mid-1980s.23</p>
<p>When Hamas began gathering strength, it was at first misjudged by Israel to be a religious NGO that might develop into a political counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organization and to its affiliate terrorist groups. Writing in <i>The Wall Street Journal </i>in January 2009, Andrew Higgins notes:</p>
<p>When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and ‘80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called <i>Mujama Al-Islamiya</i>, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank.</p>
<p>It did not take long for Israel to realize that the Hamas was arguably an even worse belligerent than the PLO. When Yassir Arafat and, after his death, Abu Mazen went through the motions of conducting “talks” and negotiations with Israel (as the price for receiving American and European support and financing), Hamas denounced such behavior, even though it was for the most part a diplomatic mime. Unlike the PLO, Hamas always speaks clearly and unambiguously in declaring its aims. Hamas is not even willing to pretend rhetorically that its ambitions can be met without the total annihilation of Israel and of its Jewish population.</p>
<p>Hamas is openly endeavoring to carry out a new genocide of Jews. In one of its earliest proclamations, its Leaflet #65 (October 1990), it called upon Arabs to murder Jews and burn their property: “Every Jew or settler is a target and must be killed. Their blood and their property are forfeit.” Not even the most desperate apologist for the organization can twist such statements to mean anything else. Hamas insists that “the soil of Palestine is sacred,” and that every Muslim must take action to liberate every inch of Palestine from the Jews, by which it means all of Israel. Among the more notorious targets for its bombs have been buses of civilians and the cafeteria at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.24</p>
<p>The Hamas Charter is a meandering hate document, calling for Israel’s complete annihilation.25 It explicitly cites the czarist forgery, <i>The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</i>, about a purported global Jewish conspiracy to control the world, in language resembling that on neo-Nazi websites. Hamas is fond of other nutty conspiracy theories, especially the ones claiming that the freemasons are in cahoots with the Jews in a cabal to control the planet. Among the Charter’s main points are these:</p>
<p>“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”</p>
<p>“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic <i>Waqf </i>[consecrated land held as an Islamic trust] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. “</p>
<p>“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”</p>
<p>“After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the <i>‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’</i>, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”26</p>
<p>These are the people to whom the armchair Western peace seekers demand that Israel capitulate.</p>
<p><b>Abuse of Palestinian Arabs by Hamas</b></p>
<p>One of the greatest ironies of the Middle East is that the treatment of Arabs by Arab regimes is so much <b><i>worse </i></b>than the treatment of Arabs by Israel. The only place in the Middle East where the basic human rights of Arabs are respected is, in fact, in Israel. Only there can Arabs vote, freely petition public officials and courts, exercise freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and only there is their property safe and legally protected. (Arabs are starting to enjoy some such freedoms in American-occupied Iraq.)</p>
<p>Moreover, in spite of the faddish mantras about Israeli “apartheid” heard on campuses these days, Israel is in fact the only country in the Middle East that is <b><i>not </i></b>an apartheid regime.</p>
<p>When Syria launched a campaign to wipe out the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, it killed more than 30,000 people, most of them civilians. Jordan may have killed Palestinians in even greater numbers than that in a massacre conducted by King Hussein’s regime in 1970, in what became known as “Black September.”27 (That term of mourning, ironically, was adopted as an identity by the new terrorist group that conducted the Munich massacre and many other atrocities.) Hamas is squarely in this tradition, routinely murdering large numbers of innocent Palestinians it regards as impediments to its plans. 28</p>
<p>No one knows just how many Palestinians the terror organization has killed. But Hamas is so dedicated to the liquidation of internal opposition that it took time out to murder the Fatah sympathizers in Gaza even while it was trying to fight off Israeli troops in Operation “Cast Lead” in 2008. Members of the PLO’s Fatah are routinely accused by the Hamas of collaborating with Israel and tortured. Fatah members may not hold demonstrations in the Gaza Strip, even against Israel, and if they try to do so they are attacked by Hamas thugs. Even Amnesty International, no friend of Israel’s, has spoken out against Hamas use of torture, although not against Hamas rockets fired at Jews.29 Even Arabs in Gaza hospitals have been tortured.30 The Hamas “parliament” has voted in favor of crucifixion of its opponents and rivals.31 Women deemed to be misbehaving in Gaza have been gang-raped by Hamas members.32</p>
<p>Hamas hates Christians, Bahais, and secular Muslims almost as ferociously as it hates Jews. It has brutalized Gaza Christians and ordered them to wear traditional Islamic dress.33 It has attacked churches in Gaza. In one incident its terrorists “attacked Gaza’s Latin Church and adjacent Rosary Sisters School, reportedly destroying crosses, bibles, pictures of Jesus and furniture and equipment. The attackers also stole a number of computers.” 34 Other church leaders have been ordered at gun point to promote Islam.35 Until recently, about 2000 Arab Christians lived in Gaza, but many have fled for their lives, including the son of a Hamas member of parliament who converted to Christianity.36</p>
<p>Hamas also operates numerous “vice squads” that specialize in murdering unmarried people meeting together and in torturing homosexuals.37 Some persecuted Palestinian homosexuals have sought refuge in Israel. These squads, who sometimes knee-cap their victims,38 haunt internet cafes and music stores where Gazans requiring “re-education” hang out. 39</p>
<p><b>Hamas Rule in Gaza</b></p>
<p>A bit like Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930s, Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip “legally” and only after winning an “election.” On January 29, 2006, the organization defeated its rivals in a vote to take over the “Palestinian Authority, which had been set up by Israel in the euphoria of the early “peace process” under Yitzhak Rabin and with the expectation that it would be controlled by the PLO. After vote tallies, Hamas gained 74 out of 132 seats. It was not exactly a free election; for example, no party willing to recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state was running, and no freedom of speech or of the press was in effect. Nevertheless, the strong showing of the Hamas effectively removed the PLO, the heirs of Yassir Arafat, from control of the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>Whether the PLO and Hamas actually represent conflicting ideologies has long been a matter of dispute. They are both terrorist organizations devoted to Israel’s annihilation. Abu Mazen, the “President” of the Palestinian Authority, wrote his “doctoral thesis” in Russia supporting Holocaust denial. The PLO has conducted suicide bombings and rocket firings, especially via its military “Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.”40 Hamas has done the same through its Izz ad-Din al-Qassam military.41 Theirideologicaldifferencesmatteraboutasmuch as the differences between warring mafia families and have to do with power and money far more than philosophy.</p>
<p>After the 2006 election the initial expectation on the part of many observers was that Hamas would be content to allow Palestinian Authority President Abu Mazen to remain in power or at least to serve as a significant figurehead. But after biding their time a bit, Hamas militias launched a putsch to seize all centers of power in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.42 The Fatah of the PLO put up a weak resistance and quickly fell apart. Many of its members requested that Israel “rescue them” and move them to safety in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip became popularly known as “Hamastan.”43 The PLO retreated to its control of Palestinian institutions in the West Bank from its offices in Ramallah. There Abu Mazen heads an “alternative” Palestinian Authority, without the participation of Hamas, although the organization’s loyalists control some of universities in the West Bank. It is not inconceivable that Hamas could displace the PLO in the West Bank just as it did in Gaza.</p>
<p>One of the first things Hamas did after taking over Gaza was to launch a campaign of unbridled kleptocracy, stealing funds and commodities shipped to the Gaza Strip as humanitarian aid (including that sent by other Arab countries) sent via the UN institutions operating there. A Qatari newspaper claims the theft amounts to billions of dollars.44 This is all a bit ironic, given that Hamas favors the traditional Muslim punishment for theft of chopping off of hands.45</p>
<p>Aid is the main form of income and consumption in the Gaza Strip, where the terrorists have never had much interest in building factories or creating real jobs, other than employment opportunities in terrorism. (Among the items stolen by Hamas was the actual Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Yassir Arafat). Shakedowns by Hamas gunmen have included an attempt to kidnap the parents of Rachel Corrie,46 the undergraduate American cheerleader of terrorism turned martyr for the left, who was crushed in Gaza in 2003 when she refused to get out of the way of an Israeli bulldozer demolishing terrorist hideouts. When the terrorists realized whom they had grabbed off the Gaza street, they released them, as the anti-Israel Corries represented more valuable propaganda assets for terrorism while free.</p>
<p>Imposing totalitarian power over the residents of Gaza by controlling the supply of food and other basic needs is part of Hamas’ strategy. Intentional economic ruination is, in fact, <i>de facto </i>Hamas domestic policy—the creation of a situation in which every Gazan will be dependent upon Hamas handouts and Hamas control of international aid. The response of most of the world to this has been to escalate calls for providing <b><i>even more </i></b>aid to Gaza, channeled through Hamas.</p>
<p>When Israel balked at providing supplies that would be commandeered by Hamas and used for its aims, especially while Hamas was firing thousands of rockets at Israeli children, the entire world wagged its fingers at the Israeli “oppressors denying food” meant for the poor children of the Gaza Strip. Israel was still denounced as an “occupier” of Gaza, even though it had removed all of its soldiers and civilians, because it was closely monitoring imports of supplies—and, often of arms—by Hamas. Meanwhile, Hamas also took control of the myriad smuggling tunnels that come into Gaza from Egypt, extorting “tolls” from other Gazans trying to use them to bring in supplies.</p>
<p>The result of all this has been the emergence of two <i>de facto </i>separate Palestinian mini-states in the making—Hamistan, a Hamas-controlled Islamofascist state in the Gaza Strip; and a PLO-controlled entity in the West Bank some call Fatahstan.47 At this point the starting position of the Palestinians and their apologists in any negotiations is their demand for in effect <b><i>four different </i></b>Palestinian Arab states&#8211;the two mini-states in the making, as noted; plus Jordan, whose citizens are by and large Palestinians; plus the demand that Israel itself be converted into yet another Palestinian Arab state by allowing unlimited Arab migration to it as fulfillment of the supposed Arab “right of return.”</p>
<p>As soon as Hamas had seized power in the Gaza Strip, the world heard shrill declarations that this was an organization with which Israel and the West can “do business”—pragmatic people interested in jobs and budgets. It was claimed that, despite the group’s lurid rhetoric and slogans and its menacing charter, once in office Hamas would devote all of its energies to praying, ecology, and fixing potholes. This assumption was delusional, as events soon demonstrated, but the love affair between the western left and Hamas persists.</p>
<p><b>Rehabitating Hamas as a “Social Organization” and “Charity”</b></p>
<p><i>The New York Times </i>and other liberal media are always at pains to remind everyone that Hamas also conducts non- military activities and provides some “social services.”48 When the organization won the Gaza “elections” in 2006, many Western talking heads attributed the victory to its provision of such services to Gaza residents. (On BBC radio the morning of the Hamas victory, I heard a commentator attributing the victory to the fact that Hamas is better at fixing potholes and sewers than the PLO. He was serious.)</p>
<p>Hamas does indeed operate social services, but mainly as a tool in asserting its power and control, and in order to finance its terrorism.49 The American State Department has traditionally drawn no distinction between Hamas terrorism and its social services: “As long as Hamas continues to rely on terrorism to achieve its political ends, we should not draw a distinction between its military and humanitarian arms, since funds provided to one can be used to support the other.” Even the normally anti-Israel Human Rights Watch has concluded that Hamas social functions are part and parcel of its terrorist activity: “In the case of Hamas, there is abundant evidence that the military wing is accountable to a political steering committee that includes Shaikh Ahmad Yassin, the group’s acknowledged ‘spiritual leader,’ as well as spokesperson such as Ismail Abu Shanab, ‘Abd al-’Aziz al-Rantissi, and Mahmud Zahar. Yassin himself, as well as Salah Shehadah, the late founder and commander of the ‘<i>Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades</i>, have confirmed in public remarks that the military wing implements the policies that are set by the political wing.”50 The Simon Wiesenthal Center has issued a report with the same findings.51</p>
<p><b>Hamas and al-Qaeda</b></p>
<p>Hamas and al-Qaeda are basically two sides of the same jihad.52 They have squabbled rhetorically on occasion, such as over Hamas’ meeting Putin, which bin Laden regarded as “betraying” the Chechins, but that may have been all for show. Hamas “schools” and other institutions routinely distribute the harangues of bin-Laden and other al-Qaeda materials. Hamas rallies feature posters of bin Laden and of Chechen terror leaders.</p>
<p>Hamas terrorists returning from al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan have been apprehended by Israel. Al-Qaeda emissaries have infiltrated Gaza to coordinate action with Hamas. <i>The San Francisco Chronicle </i>reported, “According to a 2004 FBI affidavit, al-Qaeda recruited Hamas members to conduct surveillance against potential targets in the United States.” In 2006, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen, himself claimed that al-Qaeda was operating in the Gaza Strip and also accused Hamas of providing aid to al-Qaeda.53. A group calling itself the “Al-Qaeda Organization Jihad in Palestine” has operated in Gaza since October 2005 with Hamas blessings.</p>
<p>Hamas has long been unabashedly anti-American.54 The FBI has been warning about possible imminent Hamas attacks on America since at least 2005. Saddam Hussein was one of the main funders of Hamas, making grants to the families of Hamas suicide bombers.55 Hamas strongly denounced the arrest and execution of Saddam by the US, calling it a “political assassination.” A Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhum, said, “Saddam Hussein was a prisoner of war. [The] hanging &#8230; is a political assassination that violates all international laws that are supposed to protect prisoners of war.”56 Several Hamas operatives have been arrested in the U.S.</p>
<p>Hamas is also one of the most openly anti-Semitic organizations on the planet. It repeats every medieval anti- Jewish libel, down to and including the use of the blood of gentile children to make Passover bread. It recently claimed that a Jewish world cabal had engineered the current collapse of financial markets.57 Hamas’ role in spreading anti-Semitism goes well beyond the Middle East. It has distributed anti-Semitic materials in Russia, including, oddly enough, the old czarist forgery, <i>The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.</i>58</p>
<p><b>Hamas, Iran, and Holocaust Denial</b></p>
<p>Hamas owes much of its growth to the support it receives from Iran. Israel’s ex-Prime Minister Olmert recently said, “Hamas in Gaza was built by Iran as a foundation for power, and is backed through funding, through training and through the provision of advanced weapons.”59</p>
<p>The moment Hamas won the Gaza “elections” in 2006, Iran rushed in to compensate for the dismay of the rest of the world. Hamas and Iran had already grown very close in the aftermath of the American-led allied invasion of Iraq in 2003.60 That closeness may seem odd, since Iran today leads the world’s Shi’ite Muslims, with their centuries of grievances against Sunni Muslims, while Hamas is clearly a Sunni entity. But the alliance makes sense when the third leg of this triangle of terror, the Shi’ite Hezbollah in Lebanon, which collaborates openly with Hamas, is factored into the equation.61</p>
<p>The Ahmedinijad regime’s partnership with Hamas has also been reflected in its adopting the Holocaust denial so fashionable in Iran. On Hamas television, numerous “experts,” ranging from Iranian leaders to German Neo- Nazis, insist that the very existence of the Holocaust has “yet to be proven historically.” In the official Hamas weekly <i>Al- Risala</i>, Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi, a senior Hamas leader, wrote on August 21, 2003:</p>
<p>“The Zionists &#8230; have succeeded in misleading the West and making it believe in the false Holocaust &#8230; The Zionists were behind the Nazis’ murder of many Jews, and agreed to it, with the aim of intimidating them [the Jews] and forcing them to immigrate to Palestine. Every time they failed to persuade a group of Jews to immigrate [to Palestine], they unhesitatingly sentenced [them] to death. Afterwards, they would organize great propaganda campaigns, to cash in on their blood. The Nazis received tremendous financial aid from the Zionist banks and monopolies, and this contributed to their rise to power &#8230; The crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against humanity, with all their atrocities, are no more than a tiny particle compared to the Zionists’ terror against the Palestinian people.” (Translation courtesy of MEMRI.)</p>
<p>When the Hamas leaders are not busy denying there ever was a Nazi Holocaust of the Jews, they are insisting that the Jews planned the Holocaust themselves.62 A Hamas film made public by the Palestinian Media Watch organization claims that Jewish leaders themselves orchestrated the European Holocaust of Jews, “so the Jews would seem persecuted and try to benefit from international sympathy.” Amin Dabur, head of the “Center for Strategic Research,” is cited in the film explaining that “the Israeli [sic] Holocaust, the whole thing was a joke and part of the perfect show that Ben Gurion put on&#8230;. They were sent [by the Jews to die] so there would be a Holocaust, so Israel could ‘play’ it for world sympathy.”</p>
<p><b>CAIR and Hamas</b></p>
<p>While Hamas cannot operate legally and openly in the United States, it has front groups that will do its work for it, chief among them being the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR.</p>
<p>CAIR is an anti-Semitic, anti-American lobby group with intimate ties to Hamas, and is sometimes considered to be an outright subsidiary of Hamas. Americans Against Hate, in fact<i>, </i>has called upon the US government to regard CAIR as an official front for Hamas.63</p>
<p>CAIR itself was established in June, 1994 by three leaders of the now-defunct American propaganda wing of Hamas, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP).64 That group was part of the American Palestine Committee, headed by the global leader of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. In March, 1994 CAIR’s co-founder and current Executive Director, Nihad Awad, stated in broken English, “After I researched the situation inside and outside Palestine, I am in support of the Hamas movement&#8230;”65</p>
<p>CAIR disseminates Hamas propaganda, including its calls for genocide against Jews. CAIR members have bragged that they plan to become suicide bombers.66 The FBI recently cut off all contact with CAIR, in part because of its intimate ties with Hamas. CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the plot by Islamists in the US, led by Sami al-Arian (a founder of CAIR), to raise funds for Hamas.67 The CAIR Research Director, Mohammad Nimer has ties with terrorists.68 H<b>e </b>also served as a board director for UASR, the strategic arm for Hamas in the U.S. According to his bio at American University, “Just as CAIR uses the facade of being a civil rights group to conduct terror activities, Nimer used the guise of “conflict resolution” expert to facilitate his movements within the al-Qaeda network.”69</p>
<p><b>The Futility of “Talks” with the Hamas</b></p>
<p>The Western fetish about “talking,” which has been analyzed at length by Joshua Muravchik,70 is based on the belief that all international conflicts and wars resemble marital spats. Thus the trick to settling them is to smooth ruffled egos and get the conflicted parties to sit down face to face, socialize over tea, emote, seek catharsis, and otherwise come to empathize with the “Other.” It is postmodernist gibberish and Habermasian “communicative action” gone berserk. It is based on the naïve belief that everyone in the world is reasonable, and so all conflict must be the result simply of misunderstanding. Proponents insist that there are no <b><i>real </i></b>conflicts of interests, just misinterpretations and hurt feelings. Grievances are mere psychological baggage, always ready to be jettisoned.</p>
<p>This fetish for talking cannot be made to conform to the basic character of Hamas. The idea that gestures of good will and frank discussions can wean this organization from its genocidal agenda is so absurd that it is hard to find words to mock it properly.</p>
<p>There is growing recognition by knowledgeable observers (those who do not secretly seek Israel’s destruction) that there is simply no way that Israel can reach any sort of peace accord or compromise solution with Hamas.71 In a recent column in <i>The New York Times </i>(January 13, 2009), Jeffrey Goldberg wrote;</p>
<p>“As the Gaza war moves to a cease-fire, a crucial question will inevitably arise, as it has before: Should Israel (and by extension, the United States) try to engage Hamas in a substantive and sustained manner? It is a fair question, one worth debating, but it is unmoored from certain political and theological realities&#8230;. Periodically, advocates of negotiation suggest that the hostility toward Jews expressed by Hamas is somehow mutable. But in years of listening, I haven’t heard much to suggest that its anti-Semitism is insincere. Like Hezbollah, Hamas believes that God is opposed to a Jewish state in Palestine. Both groups are rhetorically pitiless, though, again, Hamas sometimes appears to follow the lead of Hezbollah.”</p>
<p>The bottom line is that there is no possibility of reaching any “deals” or even real ceasefires with Hamas, which has violated every single ceasefire agreement it ever signed within minutes. It was the fact that Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israel in the first place, while a ceasefire agreement was supposed to be in effect, that led to the recent Gaza war.</p>
<p>No deal is possible because there is nothing Hamas seeks other than war. Therefore there can be no possibility for any tradeoffs or compromises that might be proposed to Hamas as compensation for its giving up or forestalling its genocidal ambitions. Since war is its <i>raison d’etre</i>, there is absolutely nothing constructive that can be gained by offering Hamas dialogue and negotiations. The only real effect of such “talks” would be to strengthen Hamas, strengthening its legitimacy among credulous European and American liberals, and so give it added leeway to continue its quest for a second Holocaust of Jews.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><b>Endnotes</b></p>
<p>1 See “Hamas Wants Off Terror List,” http://www.jihadwatch.org/ archives/010261.php</p>
<p>2 See “Appeal for the removal of Hamas from the EU terror list!.” http://www.antiimperialista.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task= view&amp;id=6060&amp;Itemid=229</p>
<p>3 “EU Urged: Take Hamas Off Blacklist,” http://news.sky.com/skynews/ Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/200806413500083?f=rss</p>
<p>4 “EU Urged: Take Hamas Off Blacklist,” <i>The New York Times</i>, May 20, 2008.</p>
<p>5 “Hamas pleased with European ‘U-turn,’ <i>Jerusalem Post</i>, Aug 15, 2007</p>
<p>6 “At Tufts, Blair says Hamas must be drawn into talks,” <i>Boston Globe</i>, Feb. 3, 2009.</p>
<p>7 “Hamas’ March to Victory ,” by Caroline B. Glick, Jan. 2, 2009, http://townhall.com/columnists/CarolineBGlick/2009/01/02/hamas_ march_to_victory?page=2</p>
<p>8 ibid.</p>
<p>9 “American Linguist Noam Chomsky: Hamas Policies Are More Conducive to a Peaceful Settlement than Those of the U.S. or Israel,” http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/011614.php</p>
<p>10 xi. “Joel Beinin: Apologist for Terrorists,” by David Horowitz, May 19, 2006, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read. aspx?GUID=681F93A4-4EFA-4327-8153-A9961EAB2ACE</p>
<p>11 http://jta.org/news/article/2009/01/13/1002220/clinton-no- negotiations-with-hamas</p>
<p>12 CNN, Feb 20, 2009, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/ meast/02/20/kerry.letter/index.html</p>
<p>13 “Bush, Obama: No to Carter-Hamas chat,” April 11, 2008, http:// www.cjnews.com/index.php?”option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=14 461&amp;Itemid=86</p>
<p>14 Cited in “Hamas&#8211;The Islamic Resistance Movement In The Territories,” by Boaz Ganor, <a href="http://www.jcpa.org/jl/saa27.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">http://www.jcpa.org/jl/saa27.htm</span></a><br />
15 Cited at http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=3368<br />
16 <i>The Guardian</i>, January 6, 2009<br />
17 http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Haj_Amin_El_Husseini.htm</p>
<p>18 “Hamas’s Foreign Benefactors,” by Kenneth Katzman, Middle East Quarterly, June 1995; Israeli Ministry of foreign Affairs, The Financial Sources of the Hamas Terror Organization, July 2003, http://www.mfa. gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2003/7/The+Financial+Sources+ of+the+Hamas+Terror+Organiza;</p>
<p>19 “Report: Hamas stealing aid supplies to sell to residents,” http:// www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3651783,00.html ; “UN, Hamas meet to discuss stolen Gaza aid,” Haaretz, 08/02/2009; see also ;http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32664_Hamas_Steals_Aid_UN_ Actually_Notices</p>
<p>20 Council on Foreign Relations, “Hamas,” January 7, 2009; “ ; Encyclopedia of the Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood,” http://www. mideastweb.org/Middle-East-Encyclopedia/muslim_brotherhood.htm</p>
<p>21 Al Ahram, “Politics in God’s Name,” Nov. 16-22, 1995</p>
<p>22 “Were the 9-11 Hijackers Really Arabs? Maybe Not,” http://www. ummah.com/worldaffairs/viewcafeature1.php?cafid=29&amp;caTopicID=6</p>
<p>23 “Hamas&#8211;The Islamic Resistance Movement In The Territories,” by Boaz Ganor, Survey of Arab Affairs, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 1992</p>
<p>24 “Hamas terrorist attacks,” and “Terrorist bombing at Hebrew University cafeteria,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs</p>
<p>25 MidEast Web Historical Documents, “Hamas Charter: The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas),” August 18 1988, http:// www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm</p>
<p>26 ibid</p>
<p>27 “The Middle East’s Apartheid Regime,” by Steven Plaut February 19, 2009 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read. aspx?GUID=864E1EC2-1EC3-4343-A1C3-87D04DE7E4E7</p>
<p>28 “Hamas Murder Campaign In Gaza Exposed: Human Rights Group,” Huffington Post, February 13, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost. com/2009/02/13/hamas-murder-campaign-exp_n_166868.html</p>
<p>29 “Amnesty charges Hamas with torture and murder,” http://www. thejc.com/articles/amnesty-charges-hamas-torture-and-murder</p>
<p>30 http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-209234</p>
<p>31 Beliefnet report: http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/12/ hamas-legalizes-crucifixion_comments.html</p>
<p>32 http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2009/01/18/alan-morrison-gang-rape- in-gaza-an-arousing-reverie/</p>
<p>33 “Hamas accused of intimidating Christians,” Nov. 6, 2007, http:// www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58531 ; “Sojourners for Hamas,” July 03, 2007 , http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ Read.aspx?GUID=35537182-EBCE-4CF7-A04D-3795F4857598 ; “Hamas’ Christian convert: I’ve left a society that sanctifies terror,” july</p>
<p>31, 2008, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1007097.html</p>
<p>34 ‘Christians must accept Islamic rule,’ http://www.ynet.co.il/english/ articles/0,7340,L-3414753,00.html</p>
<p>35 ‘Hamas accused of intimidating Christians,’ http://www.wnd.com/ news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58531<br />
36 ibid and ‘Hamas turns on Gaza Christians,’ http://www.israeltoday. co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&amp;nid=13149</p>
<p>37 http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Soc/soc.culture.israel/2006- 06/msg00658.html</p>
<p>38 http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/ Security/?id=3.0.3001523783</p>
<p>39 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=833956</p>
<p>40 “Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade,” by Holly Fletcher, April 2, 2008, Council on Foreign Relations, backgrounder, http://www.cfr.org/ publication/9127</p>
<p>41 “Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam,” Encyclopedia of the Middle East, http://www.mideastweb.org/Middle-East-Encyclopedia/sheikh_izz_ad- din_al-qassam.htm</p>
<p>42 <i>The Guardian</i>, June 15, 2007.<br />
43 “The Specter of ‘Hamastan’: More Must Be Done to Counter Islamist Gains in Gaza,” by Dennis Ross. Washington Post, June 4, 2007</p>
<p>44 http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/commentary/commentaryother.a sp?file=Februarycommentary322006.xml; A sample of other reports: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/160296 ; http:// www.taiwansnews.net/story/462616 ; http://www.jihadwatch.org/ archives/016962.php ; http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/952322. html; http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1137605920728&amp;pag ename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull</p>
<p>45 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,385502,00.html<br />
46 ‘Rachel Corrie’s parents endure brush with Gaza kidnappers,’</p>
<p><i>Jerusalem Post</i>, Jan 5, 2006.<br />
47 “Hamastan vs Fatahstan,” By Christoph Schult, <i>Salon</i>, June 19,</p>
<p>2007,</p>
<p>48 “Hamas,” <i>The New York Times</i>, March 9, 2009 ; see also the review of Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, by Matthew Levitt, in <i>New York Sun</i>, May 23, 2006</p>
<p>49 ibid, and see also “ Hamas’s use of charitable societies to fund and support terror,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 22 Sep 2003</p>
<p>50 “Erased In A Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks Against Israeli Civilians,” Human Rights Watch, October, 2002</p>
<p>51 “Unmasking Hamas’ Hydra of Terror,” http://www.wiesenthal.com/ atf/cf/%7bDFD2AAC1-2ADE-428A-9263-35234229D8D8%7d/ hydraofterror.pdf</p>
<p>52 “Ties between al Qaeda and Hamas in Mideast are long and frequent,” <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>, March 5, 2006</p>
<p>53 “Abbas Accuses Hamas of Aid to Al Qaeda,” New York Times, July 11, 2007; “Abbas Links Hamas and Al Qaeda,” New York Times, Jul 10, 2007; “The Strip Club: Al Qaeda and Hamas in Gaza,” by James S. Robbins, National Review Online, March 6, 2006</p>
<p>54 Daniel Pipes, “Hamas vs. America,” <i>New York Sun</i>, May 3, 2005</p>
<p>55 “PalestiniansGetSaddamCharityChecks,”CBSNews,March13,2003</p>
<p>56 “Reactions to Saddam Hussein’s execution,” Middle East Online, http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=18985</p>
<p>57 “Hamas: ‘Jewish Lobby’ in U.S. to blame for global financial crisis,” Haaretz, Oct 7, 2008</p>
<p>58 “Hamas distributes Iranian anti-Semitic cartoons to Russia,” http:// www.iranholocaustdenial.com/news/hamas-distributes-iranian- anti-semitic-cartoons-to-russia-3.htm, “Protocols of the Elders of Zion—fuel for bigots,” http://www.iranholocaustdenial.com/education/ protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-fuel-for-bigots-2.htm; “Protocols of the Elders of Zion &#8211; Favorite Classic,” http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/ archives/00000236.html</p>
<p>59 “The Iran-Hamas Alliance: Threat and Folly,” by Hillel Frisch, BESA Center for Strategic Studies, May 1, 2007; Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2009; “Iran pledges to finance Hamas-led Palestinian government,” Haaretz, February 22, 2006</p>
<p>60 ‘Iran Is Building “Hamastan” in Gaza,’ by Shalom Harari , Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, March 11, 2007</p>
<p>61 “Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran,” by Martin Kramer, http://www. geocities.com/martinkramerorg/HezbollahHamas.pdf ; “Lebanon: The Israel-Hamas-Hezbolah Conflict,” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, August 14, 2006; “Palestinians: Hamas, Hezbollah cooperated on Jerusalem terror attack,” Haaretz, March 9, 2008;</p>
<p>62 “ Hamas: Jews planned the Holocaust,” <i>Jerusalem Post</i>, Apr. 30, 2008; “Hamas: Jews planned the Holocaust,” UPI.com, May 1, 2008</p>
<p>63 “CAIR called ‘turnstile’ for terrorist suspects,’ http://www. worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59026 ; “CAIR: Youngest Member of Hamas Family Tree,” http://counterterrorismblog. org/2007/08/cair_youngest_member_of_hamas.php ; http://www. americansagainsthate.org/releases/PR-HamasCAIR.htm</p>
<p>64 “CAIRing for Hamas,” by Joe Kaufman, http://www.frontpagemag. com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=7C8D1A60-539A-42A9-AD22- C64E5473CC1</p>
<p>65 “CAIR and Hamas, http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/ misc/113.pdf ;”CAIR director attended Hamas meeting,” http:// www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57003 ; “American-Born Muslims And The Lessons Of The Lackawanna, NY Terrorist Cell,” by Alan Caruba, toogoodreports.com ^ , September 16, 2002 ,</p>
<p>66 “Death of a Hamas Supporter,” by Joe Kaufman http://www. frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=18F94773-705D- 40C5-ACD6-A05D5047B40F ; IPT News, http://www.investigative project.org/985/fbi-cuts-off-cair-over-hamas-questions ; “Hamas and Hizzoner,” by John Perazzo, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ Read.aspx?GUID=5E5F4FCA-2B20-4393-917C-506AC4C756F7</p>
<p>67 “Feds name CAIR in plot to fund Hamas,” http://www.worldnetdaily. com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56009</p>
<p>68 http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2003/06/cairs-legal-tribulations.html 69 http://www.american.edu/manimer/bio/bio.html</p>
<p>70 “Obama’s ‘Talking’ Cure,” September, 2008, http://www. commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/obama-s&#8211;talking&#8211;cure- 12504</p>
<p>71 For example, http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/wm971. cfm</p>
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		<title>Some Questions for Some People</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/some-questions-for-some-people/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=some-questions-for-some-people</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2014 04:25:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Mohammad Abu Khdeir]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Will the Left call for understanding for the killers of Mohammad Abu Khdeir?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/531361333.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235817" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/531361333-420x350.jpg" alt="PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-KIDNAPPING-FUNERAL" width="304" height="253" /></a>The police in Israel are claiming they have solved the murder of  the Arab teenager Mohammad Abu Khdeir, claiming six Jewish youths were arrested and three confessed.  Maybe.  Since there have been numerous cases of arrests of &#8220;Tag Mechir&#8221; (Price Tag) people where the police subsequently admitted it had no case and the arrested were released, it behooves us to wait patiently to see how this works itself out.</p>
<p>But in the meantime, I think we should all be asking some tough questions and demanding answers from some interesting people.</p>
<p>Some questions for some people:</p>
<p>For Hanin Zoabi. the ARab fascist member of the Israeli parliament, having proclaimed that the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teenagers is definitely not terrorism, will you now be proclaiming that the kidnapping and murder of teenager Mohammad Abu Khdeir is similarly not terror?</p>
<p>For the editors of the NY Times, Washington Post, BBC, Haaretz and Yediot Ahronot: will you be referring to the murderers of Mohammad Abu Khdeir as activists and militants? Noting that one man&#8217;s terrorist is just another man&#8217;s freedom fighter?</p>
<p>Will Israel&#8217;s tenured Left refer to the jailed murderers as political prisoners?   Will they insist that they be released from prison as a goodwill gesture, since one can only make peace with one&#8217;s enemies, not with one&#8217;s friends?</p>
<p>For Israeli leftists: will you be proclaiming that the acts by the murderers of Mohammad Abu Khdeir must be understood against the background of their grievances and sufferings?</p>
<p>For the Palestinians of Hebron and Ramallah: got any candies and sweets left over from the celebrations over the murders of the three Jewish teenagers that you&#8217;d like to share now?</p>
<p>For Bibi Netanyahu: will the alleged murderers of Mohammad Abu Khdeir, if they are convicted, be invited to sign up for university degree studies at the Open University and through distance learning while in prison? How about conjugal visits and nice DVDs?</p>
<p>Will the University of Haifa set up a special law clinic to provide free legal counsel to the arrested alleged murderers of  Mohammad Abu Khdeir?</p>
<p>Will the Obama Administration rule that donations to the alleged murderers of Mohammad Abu Khdeir be made tax deductible?</p>
<p>Will the International Solidarity Movement hold protests in front of the prisons where the alleged perps are being held to demand that they be released?</p>
<p>Will the world media refer to the killers of Mohammad Abu Khdeir as being unfortunates swept up in the cycle of violence?</p>
<p>Will college campus in the US hold rallies of solidarity with the perps and march with anti-Abu-Khdeir banners reading, &#8220;No Justice, No Peace!&#8221;</p>
<p>Will leftist professors in Israel demand that streets be named after the alleged killers of  Mohammad Abu Khdeir?</p>
<p>Will the caring class demand that any of the alleged perps who are minors be tried in family court?</p>
<p>Will the Israeli government follow the lead of the Palestinian Authority and pay large subsidies to the families of the alleged perps?</p>
<p>Will the Western press make sure that every story about the murder of Abu Khdeir emphasize the fact that he was living in &#8220;disputed territory&#8221; which he was occupying against the will of the murderers?</p>
<p>Will leftist Professors Zeev Sternhell and Moshe ZImmerman of the Hebrew University dismiss Abu Khdeir as a member of the Hitler youth?</p>
<p><span style="color: #222222;">Will the Western media and politicians all proclaim that the murder was justifiable or at least understandable because the perps believed that the murdered child was occupying land that properly belongs to the perps?</span></p>
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		<title>The Ultra-Left Rallies to Celebrate Israeli Kidnappings</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Jun 2014 04:26:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Anti-Semites from around the world revel in the abduction of Jewish children. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/WPIX-vid22670-in0-out4101-01f5acdb-53a040ee-LargeImage.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234435" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/WPIX-vid22670-in0-out4101-01f5acdb-53a040ee-LargeImage-422x350.jpg" alt="WPIX-vid22670-in0-out4101-01f5acdb-53a040ee-LargeImage" width="280" height="232" /></a>Alongside the agony regarding the kidnapping by the terrorists of three Israeli teenagers, two of them aged 16, one of those an American citizen, there is also emerging a wave of celebration of the kidnappings by ultra-leftist anti-Israel Jews.  In the US, a number of Jewish anti-Semites have justified and celebrated the kidnappings.   One in particular is &#8220;professor&#8221; Marc H. Ellis, who was the &#8220;Professor of Jewish Studies&#8221; at Baylor University before Baylor fired him.  Ellis is a know-nothing Jewish-born Catholic-educated pseudo-academic who insists that the only real moral conclusion from the Holocaust is that Israel must be eliminated.   His <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/06/kidnapped.html">celebration of the kidnappings</a> appears on the anti-Semitic junk blog Mondoweiss.   Ellis by the way is employed these days at a 12th rate UN school in Costa Rico where he no doubt has convinced the rainforest tribesmen that he is an authority on Judaism.</p>
<p>Within Israel, a number of ultra-leftists have also emerged to celebrate and justify the kidnappings.  Quite a few columnists at Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper printed in Hebrew, have expressed such sentiments.   In Haaretz, Avraham Burg, who was once speaker of the Knesset, published <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.599318">this piece</a>, in which he said that Israel had &#8220;kidnapped&#8221; all of Palestinian society so there was nothing particularly noteworthy in Palestinians kidnapping Jewish children.   Burg is active in J Street and Meretz these days.  While Palestinians have been handing out candies and sweets to celebrate the kidnappings, it would not surprise me if we hear that Peace Now is similarly handing out candies to celebrate this wonderful blow against the occupiers.</p>
<p>The Arab fascist Knesset member Hanin Zoabi has of course been outspoken in expressing her joy at the kidnappings.  She insists that kidnapping children is simply not terrorism at all, unlike writing anti-Arab graffiti on walls.  Interestingly, quite a few Israeli leftists are backing Zoabi, defending not only her &#8220;right&#8221; to celebrate the kidnappings but also endorsing the content of what she says.  The European-funded anti-Israel 972 Magazine web site is solidly pro-Hanin.</p>
<p>Among the leading figures endorsing Hanin&#8217;s celebration of the kidnappings has been Orit Kamir.  Her endorsement of Hanin Zoabi appears in Hebrew <a href="http://2nd-ops.com/orit/?p=65931">here</a>.  She proclaims that Zoabi not only has the right to support the kidnappings but Kamir explicitly says she agrees with Zoabi.  Who exactly is Kamir?  Her story states volumes about the collapse of academic standards in Israel.</p>
<p>Kamir is a radical feminist &#8220;academic&#8221; who made headlines a few years back when she was denied tenure at the law school of the Hebrew University.  She had gotten a law degree and worked as the legal rep for Israel&#8217;s main feminizt lobby, the &#8220;Women&#8217;s Caucus.&#8221;  She later did doctoral work on &#8220;stalking&#8221; and in &#8220;feminist law,&#8221; whatever that is.  She was offered a position at the law school at the Hebrew University.  But in 2001 she was turned down for promotion and tenure due to a lack of serious <em>bona fide</em> academic publications.</p>
<p>Kamir decided to turn herself into a feminist martyr and started harassing the University in court.  She filed a discrimination suit in an Israel labor court (these are special courts that are invariably hostile to employers).  Kamir claimed she was turned down because of her feminist opinions.  Yeah, sure.  The law school at the Hebrew University is crawling with leftists and the politically correct, but the ones who advance in the system also publish academic articles.  A lot of what Kamir has published consists of quack articles about movie actors and films.   24 out of 29 members of the law faculty filed a written petition with the University administration demanding that Kamir NOT be granted tenure or promoted, an event without precedent!   The administration told the court that Kamir had a track record of personal acrimony with other faculty and with students.</p>
<p>After dragging along for two years, the labor court proposed a compromise, under which Kamir could continue working at the Hebrew University but without tenure, for a period of 6 years.  The Hebrew University administration caved and signed.  She was allowed to stay on in one of the worst incidents of affirmative action in Israeli academia.  In 2009 she was finally dismissed from the Hebrew University altogether.</p>
<p>Since then she has held minor positions at other institutions and evidently these days she is employed by the &#8220;Shimon Peres Academic Center,&#8221; a pseudo-college.  She also has gotten funding from the New Israel Fund to promote feminizt agendas.  To her credit, she did speak out against instances of sexual harassment of students by faculty members at the Hebrew University.  The web lists a course she still offers at the Hebrew University outside the law school in the &#8220;multidisciplinary department,&#8221; whatever that is.</p>
<p>Kamir is the new defender of Hanin Zoabi and the rights of terrorists to kidnap Jewish children.</p>
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		<title>The Myth of Ethnic Inequality in Israel</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 05 Jun 2014 04:05:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Discrimination]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[ethnicity]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The data that dismantle the leftist lies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_233329" style="width: 342px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/458.jpg"><img class="wp-image-233329" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/458.jpg" alt="458" width="332" height="234" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Ethnicity in Israel is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Both Jews and Arabs are subdivided into ethnic sub-groups, and there are important differences in socioeconomic status among Arab Muslims, Arab Christians, and Arab Druze.</p></div>
<p><em>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/3839/israel-inequality">Middle East Quarterly</a>. </em></p>
<p>It is commonplace to attribute much of Israel&#8217;s domestic tensions to supposed Jewish discrimination against the country&#8217;s Arab citizens.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[1]</span> Nearly every Israeli Arab nongovernmental organization insists that such discrimination characterizes the Jewish state in general and its labor markets in particular.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[2]</span> The Israeli media routinely interview Israeli Arabs (and non-Ashkenazi Jews) who claim to have been victims of discrimination. These allegations are echoed by Jewish Israeli academics, think tanks, and journalists, especially on the political Left, not to mention the international anti-Israel movement and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign. Indeed, the U.S. Department of State has even joined the growing outcry concerning Israel&#8217;s alleged racist discrimination against its Arab citizens.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[3]</span></p>
<p>Of course, in reality, Israel is the only Middle Eastern entity that is not an apartheid regime, and the apartheid slander holds no water whatsoever save in the minds of the Jewish state&#8217;s enemies and defamers. Yet discrimination is a scientifically empirical question subject to testing and not a matter of subjective personal opinion. Stripping away the venomous anti-Israel rhetoric, the legitimate question remains whether and how much discrimination really exists in Israel.</p>
<p style="color: #ad3031;"><b>Inequality Myths</b></p>
<p>Ethnicity in Israel is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Both Jews and Arabs are subdivided into ethnic sub-groups, making exploration and analysis of ethnic disparities a complex challenge. In official statistical data on income, Israeli Arabs are treated as a single population group, but this is somewhat misleading. There are important differences in socio-economic status and performance among Arab Christians, Arab Muslims, and Druse. Those sub-categories are in fact amalgams of even smaller divisions. For example, there are interesting differences between &#8220;ordinary&#8221; Arab Muslims and Bedouins. The Israeli Income Survey sample does not include the Arab population of the &#8220;occupied territories,&#8221; except for East Jerusalem and the small population of the Golan Heights, both of which are formally annexed to Israel.</p>
<p>Ethnicity among Jews is even more complex. It is commonly measured in Israel for statistical purposes based upon the continent of birth of the person or the person&#8217;s father. Jews born in Asia and Africa (or the children of fathers born there) correspond roughly to Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews. Those born in Europe, the United States, or Australia (and their children) correspond roughly to Ashkenazi or Western Jews. These distinctions are imperfect as there are Ashkenazi Jews who come from Asia and Africa (including South Africa and some Egyptian Jews) and Sephardic Jews who come from Europe (including from Greece, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria). Over time this &#8220;continent of birth&#8221; criterion for defining ethnicity is losing its validity because of the rapid increase in native-born Israelis who are themselves sons and daughters of native-born Israelis. In addition, the high intermarriage rate among Jews in Israel from different communities is blurring ethnic distinctions.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[4]</span></p>
<p>Before tackling the specific patterns of ethnic inequality and discrimination in Israeli labor markets, it is necessary to dispose of certain myths and superstitions, beginning with the assumption that heterogeneity proves discrimination. It is a common but mistaken belief that, in the absence of discrimination, the numerical representation in any profession or wage range for all groups in a society should be the same as the proportion of that group in the general population. This might be called the false axiom of &#8220;natural homogeneity.&#8221; Thus if Group A is over-represented in a profession, compared with its weight in the general population, then it must be the beneficiary of discrimination in its favor. If Group B is under-represented, it must be suffering from discrimination against its members. Many then conclude that affirmative action quotas are needed to remedy the problem. This is known as the &#8220;disparate impact&#8221; standard or pseudo-evidence.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[5]</span></p>
<p>But the axiom of natural homogeneity is completely specious. Nowhere in the real world does fair competition produce homogeneous representation in any market. Indeed, the only way in which such homogeneity can be achieved is through a rigid anti-competitive system of assignments in hiring or admissions by quota, one that suppresses individual interests, skills, culture, economics, family, educational and regional backgrounds, and meritocracy.</p>
<p>The world is full of examples of radical departures from numerical homogeneity in representation that clearly have nothing at all to do with discrimination: Jews around the world are over-represented among those admitted into universities relative to their numbers in the general population even in countries that have official policies of discriminating against Jews. Asian Americans are also over-represented among U.S. college students but not because these colleges discriminate against non-Asians. American blacks are not prominent in sports because of anti-white discrimination. About 60 percent of the medical students in Israel are women, and this is not because the medical schools discriminate against men. Israeli Arabs are grossly over-represented among students in schools of pharmacy, and it is not because these schools discriminate against Jews. Men are enormously over-represented among the prison populations in all countries, and it is not because of gender discrimination. And so on and so forth.</p>
<div id="attachment_233331" style="width: 290px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/459.jpg"><img class="wp-image-233331" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/459.jpg" alt="459" width="280" height="214" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">About 60 percent of Israeli medical students are women while Israeli Arabs are over-represented in schools of pharmacy. This is not because these schools discriminate against male Jews. Israeli Arabs own proportionately twice as many cars as Israeli Jews; no one has suggested that this attests to discrimination against Jews.</p></div>
<p>The fallaciousness of the idea that discrimination is proven by deviation from numerical homogeneity in representation cannot be over-emphasized. It crops up in almost every debate about ethnic or gender discrimination. When feminists, media commentators, and even many academics wish to prove that discrimination exists, their proof usually consists of presenting numbers that show departure from homogeneity. Such figures are selected when they serve the agenda of the commentator or advocate. Yet it turns out that Israeli Arabs own proportionately twice as many cars as Israeli Jews;<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[6]</span> no one has suggested that this attests to discrimination in Israel against Jews.</p>
<p>In 2013, the Israeli newspaper <i>Haaretz</i> ran an exposé about supposed discrimination against Israeli Arabs by Israeli banks, which quickly became the focus of a parliamentary investigation.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[7]</span> The alleged evidence was that Israeli Arabs were paying, on average, higher bank fees than Jews for certain services. But a closer look showed that Arab bank accounts tend to be held in small rural banks with higher per-unit costs and may both be smaller on average and in different sorts of accounts than those held by Jews. For example, Arabs hold fewer long-term provident savings or retirement accounts, in part because the age structure of the Arab population is younger than its Jewish counterpart. All this results in different arrays of fees being charged but has nothing to do with discrimination. However, such an explanation would provide little sensationalist grist for the media or headline-grabbing power for politicians.</p>
<p>If numerical representation and deviation from natural homogeneity add nothing in terms of understanding discrimination, what about analyzing differences in wages and salaries directly? It would seem that if discrimination does indeed exist in a society, the most promising arena to seek it out is the labor market. But here, too, problems exist.</p>
<p>Analysis of possible discrimination as reflected in labor market wages has the advantage of being able to utilize a rich data set, unlike other markets in which discrimination is alleged. It also matters more. Few, including Arab leaders, would care very much if, after controlling for all the other possible explanations, Israeli Arabs were really paying higher bank fees than Jews. But everyone would think it is important if Arabs were the victims of wage discrimination. Having noted this, it still needs to be emphasized that the mere documentation of a disparity in wages between Jews and Arabs does not in and of itself prove anything, much less discrimination.</p>
<p>Consider the following situation: Suppose that it is found that 45-year-old Israeli Jewish software engineers with postgraduate degrees earn several times the wages of 20-year-old Arab youths who never finished high school. Would this datum be evidence of discrimination against Arabs in the labor market?</p>
<p>Of course, 45-year-old engineers in any ethnic population generally earn far more than 20-year-old high school dropouts. Their labor is simply worth more, and the market prices it accordingly. If one controls for education, age, and field of study, it is possible to compare 45-year-old Jewish engineers with Arab engineers, or 20-year-old Jewish with Arab high school dropouts, to see if there are any residual gaps in wages. There could also be other factors not yet taken into account that explain observed residual disparities, for example, disparities between wages in rural/peripheral labor markets and those in metropolitan areas. Any suspected ethnic discrimination is tentative and needs to be assessed in light of many other non-ethnic factors that affect wages.</p>
<p>Special attention needs to be paid to differences in labor force participation rates. Arab women in Israel, especially married Muslim women, have very low participation rates. This means that most employed Arab women are young and not yet married, which in turn generates a considerable gap in earnings levels when compared with Jewish women (and men of all groups). Gender differences in wages must be separated out to understand patterns of ethnic inequality.</p>
<p>It has been demonstrated in other countries that something as innocuous as age structure may often explain a considerable portion of disparities in earnings across ethnic/racial groups. For example, the eminent economist Thomas Sowell has demonstrated that one of the major causes for racial inequality in the United States is age difference, with the black and Hispanic population considerably younger than the white population for a variety of demographic reasons. He pointed out that &#8220;Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans have median ages of less than twenty years while the average Irish American or Italian American is more than thirty years old, and Jewish Americans are over forty.&#8221;<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[8]</span> Since 40-year-olds invariably earn far more than 20-year-olds, a significant portion of earnings disparities among American ethnic groups reflects nothing more than age structure differences.</p>
<p>Age structure also explains part of the earning differences in Israel since Israeli Jews are on average considerably older than Israeli Arabs, particularly Israeli Muslims. It is estimated that the median age of Muslim Israelis is 19 while the median age of Jewish Israelis is 31.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[9]</span> (Interestingly, Christian Arabs have an age structure similar to that of Jews, with median age 30, and also have mean earnings very close to those of Jews.) So an age-explained earnings gap similar to that in the United States arises where age explains part of ethnic inequality.</p>
<p style="color: #ad3031;"><b>Data and Raw Inequality Patterns</b></p>
<p>The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) conducts an annual survey of income and wages. It is a large, scientifically-designed, representative survey that covers the entire Israeli population excluding the population in the &#8220;occupied territories,&#8221; foreign temporary workers, and tourists. The CBS is staffed with professional statisticians of the highest caliber, and its operations are in line with international standards of professionalism and integrity.</p>
<p>Part of the income survey is based on households (N = 14,996) and measures income at the household level from various sources. Another is based on income from salary and other sources for individual earners (N=35,680) aged over 15. A household can have multiple earners. Income measured includes that from salaries, self-employment, capital, pension, alimony, social insurance, governmental support, and other categories.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[10]</span> Other variables contained in the survey include age, marital status, schooling, ethnicity, occupation, and location of residence.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[11]</span></p>
<p>What does the income survey show about ethnic inequality in Israel? One can begin to digest the data starting with the raw numbers and measures of earnings, not adjusted for variables such as age and years of schooling. These numbers explain little about actual patterns of income inequality in Israel but offer a starting point for exploration.</p>
<p>In the Israeli &#8220;Income Survey of 2011,&#8221; the average salary for the entire population of Israeli Arab males was 50.2 percent of the mean for the entire population of Jewish males. Jewish females on average earned salaries that were 61.8 percent of those of Jewish males. Arab females earned only 34 percent of the salaries of Arab males and 28 percent of the salaries of Jewish females,<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[12]</span> but this was no doubt in part because of part-time employment common among Arab women. Raw household income disparities follow a somewhat different pattern because salaries are only one component of household income. Household income for Arabs was about 55 percent that of Jews. While these raw disparities appear large, they are not unusual when comparing across ethnic populations within countries. The real question remains what is causing them.</p>
<p>There are also disparities in the raw figures among subgroups of Jews, to some extent caused by age structure. The groups with the highest salaries and household incomes are native-born Jews. Those born elsewhere are usually divided between recent immigrants and earlier immigrants. The dividing line for distinguishing recent immigrants is necessarily arbitrary; in the discussion here, the cutoff used is 1990. In the last two decades, the largest group of new immigrants has been from the former Soviet Union. A separate smaller group, about whose economic performance relatively little is known, consists of Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia. These will be separated out here from other immigrants by distinguishing them as recent immigrants born in Africa. This, too, is an imperfect measure, and some Jews from North African countries and from South Africa are probably mixed into this sub-sample definition as well.</p>
<p>Among native-born Israelis, the Ashkenazi males earn 16 percent more than the Mizrahi/Sephardic males. Ashkenazi and Mizrahi females earn exactly the same average salaries, which are about 40 percent lower than for native-born Ashkenazi males. Among foreign-born Jews, Mizrahim earn average salaries 32 percent lower than Ashkenazim for males, and 39 percent lower for females. Women in all population groups earn less than men in the same groups.</p>
<p>So the starting point is a set of seemingly wide disparities in average earnings across Israeli ethnic groups. Jews earn more than Arabs, in fact twice as much on average; women earn less than men; Mizrahim earn less than Ashkenazim. Two additional caveats need to be mentioned. First, these numbers are based on reported salaries. While survey respondents were told the information was confidential and would not be passed on to the tax authorities, it is possible that some of the salary numbers are in fact under-reported. Israel is thought to have a significant underground or unreported economy where cash is earned under the table. For a variety of reasons, including concentrations in occupations in which non-reporting is easier and more common, it is generally believed that non-reporting of income is higher among Arabs than among Jews.</p>
<p>An additional caveat is that disparities across ethnic groups in salaries and in household income are different from disparities in household expenditures. Standards of living are ultimately measured in real consumption rather than in monetary terms, and in Israel, gaps in levels of expenditure among the ethnic groups are considerably smaller than those in salaries or incomes. In addition, intentional under-reporting of income is unlikely to affect reported levels of expenditure, and so these data may be more reliable. The bottom line is that raw inequality among Israeli ethnic groups is considerably smaller when measured in terms of expenditures rather than incomes.</p>
<p style="color: #ad3031;"><b>Analysis of Individual Salary and Earnings</b></p>
<p>To understand properly the role of ethnicity in explaining disparities in earnings, one needs to take into account other non-ethnic factors that affect earnings, notably gender, age, education (measured in several different ways), marital status, number of persons in household, immigration status (new immigrant vs. not), membership in certain elite professions such as manager or engineer, and geographic variables (residence in one of the large cities, in medium-sized towns, etc.). Statistical estimates of the impact upon earnings by individuals of a variety of ethnic, demographic, and other factors are presented in Table 1 below.</p>
<p>First, after controlling for age, education, and other non-ethnic explanatory variables, is it really the case that Arabs underperform in the Israeli labor market when compared with Jews? The answer is generally, no. It does depend on which definition of earnings is being used.</p>
<p>When estimating only salaries for both men and women together (not shown in the table), Arabs do indeed underperform when compared with Jews. The difference is not very large (approximately 450 shekels a month or a bit over $100), and this is very small when compared to the raw disparity between earnings of Jews and Arabs, seen above as being approximately a 100 percent difference. The disadvantage in salary earnings for Arabs is about the same as that experienced by Jewish new immigrants in Israel.</p>
<p>But salaries are only one component of individual earnings. Salaries are what employees receive from employers while &#8220;all individual earnings&#8221; include things such as self-employed income by artisans or shop-owners or owners of proprietary establishments. Such self-employed and proprietary income is probably more common among Arabs than Jews, the latter being more likely to be salaried employees. The numbers in the table here show the results when analyzing all individual earnings from all sources, including such non-salary sources. When controlling for age, schooling, and the other non-ethnic factors, Israeli Arabs outperform Jews on average, earning more than Jews of similar age and schooling levels. Indeed, on average Arabs earn more than both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, about 9 percent higher, other things being equal.</p>
<p>The fact that the labor market disadvantage of Israeli Arabs disappears entirely when total individual earnings (as opposed to salaries alone) are analyzed may be because many Arabs are self-employed.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[13]</span> In any case, it turns out that not only do non-ethnic factors explain the bulk of the raw disparity in earnings between Israeli Arabs and Jews, but in many cases they explain more than the total disparity. In the case of total individual earnings income, they explain more than 100 percent of the raw disparity (meaning that, after controlling for explanatory variables, Arabs actually outperform Jews).</p>
<p>The picture becomes clearer when men and women earners are analyzed separately. This has the advantage of removing gender differences in labor force participation rates from the analysis of the role of ethnicity. The gap in earnings for Arab women compared with Jewish women is quite small when controlling for other variables; it is only about 2 percent to the advantage of Jews. But for males, Arabs are at a 10 percent advantage over Jews in total individual earnings. Again, Arabs outperform Jews.</p>
<div id="attachment_233332" style="width: 318px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/460.jpg"><img class="wp-image-233332 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/460.jpg" alt="460" width="308" height="232" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">It is important to distinguish between salaries and earnings. For example, Israeli Arab males may make on average 50 percent less than Israeli Jewish males in salary, but in earnings (which include income sources such as self-employment), they out-perform Israeli Jews by approximately 9 percent on average.</p></div>
<p>Arabs also have a disadvantage compared with Jews when it comes to total household earnings (not shown in the table), as opposed to total individual earnings. But the wider gap at the household earnings level is due to factors outside the labor market. Jews have higher savings rates than Arabs, and thus have higher levels of household capital income.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[14]</span> Jews are also older and so receive on average higher amounts of retirement income. These disparities in non-labor income at the level of households largely reflect differences between Jews and Arabs in savings behavior and household composition and cannot be attributed to labor market discrimination.</p>
<p>What about disparities across ethnic sub-groups of Israeli Jews? The first notable pattern is this: The main group that over-performs compared with others is native-born Israeli Jews or <i>sabra</i>s. Being born in the country confers a distinct earnings advantage in Israel as it does in most other countries. There is a modest advantage in income, about 8 percent for men and 2 percent for women, for those who are native-born Israeli Jews, compared with those who are foreign-born. And this is true for both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews.</p>
<p>When controlling for other non-ethnic factors, Ashkenazim have a small advantage over Mizrahim among men, about 2 percent for total individual income and 4 percent for salary alone, much smaller than the gap in the raw earnings numbers, and much smaller than the premium enjoyed by native-born Jews. For women, Ashkenazim slightly underperform Mizrahim. More generally, because of the advantage of being a <i>sabra</i>, a native-born Mizrahi Jew would generally outperform a non-native Ashkenazi Jew, other things being equal. When men and women are separated in the analysis of earnings, the &#8220;natives&#8221; retain an earnings advantage among both genders. Mizrahi Jewish women are outperforming the Ashkenazi Jewish women.</p>
<p>Recent immigrants in Israel are at an earnings disadvantage compared to the other population groups. Controlling for age, education, and the other non-ethnic factors, recent immigrants earn about 5.5 percent less in total individual earnings while for salary alone (not shown in the table), they earn 10-14 percent less than other Israelis. The earnings disadvantage is larger for men than for women. Interestingly, immigrants from Africa (mainly Ethiopians) do not suffer from any special earnings disadvantage as compared with the earnings levels of all recent immigrants. All immigrants are at a modest disadvantage in the labor market, but Ethiopians no more so than non-Ethiopian immigrants. When men and women are analyzed separately, Ethiopians slightly outperform the other immigrants.</p>
<p style="color: #ad3031;"><b>Are Israeli Arabs Disadvantaged Because of Schooling?</b></p>
<p>Economists like to describe schooling and degrees as &#8220;human capital,&#8221; and it is possible to measure the returns or market rewards to this capital using statistical methodologies. One issue that has frequently been debated in Israel is whether educated Arabs are at a market disadvantage, since—because of discrimination—they are less capable of capitalizing upon their educational achievements.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[15]</span></p>
<p>Once again, the presumption of discrimination does not survive empirical statistical analysis. The truth is quite the opposite: The return on schooling for Israeli Arabs is generally considerably higher than it is for Israeli Jews. In almost every estimate, using different measures of schooling and of earnings, the return on education appears to be higher for Arabs after controlling statistically for other variables.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[16]</span> This is true both for salaries and for all individual earnings. Since the reward for educational achievement is, if anything, higher for Arabs than for Jews, this rules out the claim of systematic discrimination against Arabs who accumulate human capital and capitalize upon it in the labor market.</p>
<p>The return on schooling is not the same, however, as the reward for membership in elite professions. Arabs, like Jews, who are members of managerial or other professional groups (lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc.) enjoy a significant earnings advantage over those who are not members of these groups. The bonus or premium for Arabs, however, is lower than that for Jews. Discrimination cannot be ruled out as a causal factor here although other factors unrelated to discrimination could also explain these disparities, including differences in distribution among professions within the broader elite professional categories.</p>
<p style="color: #ad3031;"><b>Where Is the Apartheid?</b></p>
<p>The most surprising conclusion from the econometric analysis of ethnic earnings disparities in Israel is how many of the stereotypical characterizations of Israel turn out to be false. Ethnicity in Israel simply does not play a large role in the labor market, in contrast with gender or schooling.</p>
<p>While it is widely presumed that the Arab minority underperforms in the labor market of the Jewish state, either because of discrimination or other structural or cultural disadvantages, this turns out not to be so. That accusation is central to the claim that Israel is some sort of apartheid regime. While the raw mean earnings of Arabs are considerably lower than those of Jews, the two populations differ in many significant ways, including age and schooling, and little can be concluded from this raw comparison on its own. When education, age, marital status, geographic location, and professional group membership are taken into account, Arab-Jewish earnings disparities all but disappear, and in some cases, they even invert, so that the Arabs outperform the Jews. This is particularly true of male earners.If the data fail to show a clear pattern of Arab underperformance in earnings compared with Jews with similar levels of schooling, the stereotype of Ashkenazi Jews outperforming Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews appears just as inaccurate. Once education and the other explanatory variables are controlled, there is very little difference between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim earnings, and in a few cases, particularly for women, Mizrahim outperform Ashkenazi women. The Ashkenazi-Mizrahi distinction certainly appears to be less important in explaining earnings differences than the distinction between native-born Jews and foreign-born Jews or recent immigrants. Here again, there are differences between men and women. Ashkenazi women slightly underperform Mizrahi women, other things being equal, while Ashkenazi men slightly outperform compared with Mizrahi men. The bottom line is that the data do not support the presumption that Mizrahim are systematically disadvantaged in Israeli labor markets.</p>
<p>While new immigrants underperform relative to other Jewish Israelis, other things being equal, Ethiopians do not appear to suffer from any special earnings disadvantage compared with other immigrants. If Ethiopian immigrants earn low levels of salary, it is because they have low levels of schooling. But given their level of schooling, they earn the same on average as immigrants from Russia, South Africa, and Argentina. When estimating total individual income separately for men or for women, the Ethiopians even slightly outperform the other immigrants.</p>
<p>In spite of what statistical analyses have to show, the subject of discrimination in Israel continues to fill the media, which seem to be obsessed with it even while refusing to examine actual data. For example, in the summer of 2013, a television documentary on Israel&#8217;s Channel Ten, produced by popular journalist Amnon Levy, triggered considerable media debate inside Israel. It claimed to have investigated and discovered that anti-Mizrahi discrimination is as bad as it had been back in the early decades of Israeli independence.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[17]</span> Real data show otherwise.</p>
<p>The problem is not just in the media. The academic careers of many in Israel, particularly in sociology, have been constructed entirely upon unsubstantiated allegations of Israeli racism. Israeli sociologists in general tend to accept at face value the notion that any documented disparity in earnings or numerical representation between Israeli Jews and Arabs must be due to discrimination.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[18]</span> Perhaps the most notorious example is that of Yehouda Shenhav, a sociologist at Tel Aviv University. Shenhav is father of the notion that &#8220;Oriental Jews&#8221; are in fact &#8220;Arabs of the Mosaic faith,&#8221; and together with Arabs, share a victimhood imposed upon them by racist Ashkenazi Zionists.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[19]</span> Shenhav and those of similar ideological orientation operate the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow, dedicated to liberating &#8220;Oriental Jews&#8221; from Ashkenazi bigotry and capitalism.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[20]</span></p>
<p>In Israel&#8217;s media, it is considered common knowledge that Arabs, Mizrahim, and Ethiopians are victims of harsh discrimination.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[21]</span> The accusations of apartheid may be malicious, disingenuous, and over-the-top—or so most Israeli commentators and sociologists would agree—but the presumption of an underlying widespread pattern of discrimination is, to their minds, undeniable. The extent to which some in Israel go to manufacture evidence of discrimination can be awe-inspiring. For example, the ordinarily prestigious Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), a left-wing think tank, published a study in May 2013 that claimed to have discovered unambiguous proof of widespread discrimination in Israel against Arabs.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[22]</span> Composed by IDI legal staffer Tanya Steiner under the supervision of Hebrew University professor Mordechai Kremnitzer, the study&#8217;s evidence was the number of complaints about discrimination submitted to the Israeli Commission on Equal Opportunities in Employment. Yet while numerous complaints from women reached the commission, only 3 percent of the complaints it received were from Israeli Arabs, who represent about 18 percent of the labor force. Of these, only three of the complaints received in the entire 2011 year by the commission about alleged anti-Arab discrimination were deemed worthy of investigation. So instead of concluding that the evidence points to an absence of discrimination, the IDI&#8217;s conclusion was that it all proves how badly discriminated Israeli Arabs are in Israel; after all, they are so victimized that they do not even file complaints about discrimination.</p>
<p style="color: #ad3031;"><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>There is no evidence that points to ethnic discrimination against Israeli Arabs or Mizrahi Jews in Israeli labor markets. Recent immigrants appear to be the one group in the country at an earnings disadvantage. But it would be difficult to make a case that even their disadvantage is due to discrimination since immigrants in all societies are at a competitive disadvantage compared with natives.</p>
<p>There could be other groups in Israeli society that are victims of discrimination, but the data are not available in a form that allows for investigation. In particular, a plausible case for such discrimination may be that against ultra-Orthodox Jews. Gender discrimination also cannot be ruled out, but that is a separate and difficult methodological question beyond the scope of the discussion here.</p>
<p>The nearly complete absence of evidence of ethnic discrimination in Israeli labor markets does not, of course, preclude its existence in other markets or aspects of society. As was shown here, Arabs earn a higher return on education than Jews. But this does not rule out possible discrimination against Arabs in admissions to universities and colleges. It should be noted, however, that Israeli universities routinely implement affirmative action preferences in favor of Arabs and sometimes in favor of Mizrahim (and women).<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[23]</span> The only other documented university discrimination is that which grants some preferences to army veterans, a practice found in most countries.</p>
<p>There have also been allegations that Israel discriminates in its fiscal allocations and revenue sharing where Arab towns and villages are underfunded. But an empirical analysis of the question found just the opposite; if anything, the Arab local authorities were being over-funded.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[24]</span> Evidence regarding other alleged forms of discrimination by Israel tends to be just as skimpy. Some accusations are based upon Israel&#8217;s granting automatic citizenship to Jews under its &#8220;Law of Return.&#8221; But such citizenship entitlements are not unusual in the world and can be found in many other countries, such as Armenia, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, and are guaranteed under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights</span></a>.<span style="color: #2a69a1;">[25]</span> Another indictment of Israel concerns the discriminatory nature of its military conscription. Jews and Druse are conscripted into the Israeli military while Arabs may volunteer for service but are not conscripted. Again, this practice may indeed constitute discrimination but that discrimination is against Jews, not against Arabs.</p>
<p>None of this proves that discrimination never exists in Israel against Arabs, against Mizrahi Jews, or anyone else. But the very fact that empirical evidence of discrimination is so hard to discern or observe must itself serve as an important warning indicator about its magnitude or lack thereof.</p>
<p><b>Steven Plaut</b> teaches at the Graduate School of Management at the University of Haifa.</p>
<p style="color: #ad3031;"><b>Table 1: Impact Effect of Various Factors on Salary Earnings for Men and Women</b><span style="color: #2a69a1;"><b>[26]</b></span></p>
<table style="color: #000000; height: 1618px;" border="1" width="566" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154"></td>
<td valign="top" width="115">
<p align="center">(3)</p>
<p align="center">Individual&#8217;s Total Income (includes self-employ and &#8220;other&#8221; income)<br />
– Males and Females</p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">
<p align="center">(1)</p>
<p align="center">Individual&#8217;s Total Income from all Sources<br />
– Males Only</p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">
<p align="center">(3)</p>
<p align="center">Individual Total Income<br />
from all Sources<br />
– Females Only</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Age</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Decreases by 1.3% for each extra year</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Decreases by 1.1% for each extra year</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Decreases by 1.5% for each extra year</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Effect of adding one extra year of schooling</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">&#8211;</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">&#8211;</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Increases 6.0%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for having matriculation diploma (only)</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Decreases by 6.0%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Decreases by 7.6%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">&#8211;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">College graduate dummy (increment over matriculation alone)</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Increases 39.6%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases 42.5%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">&#8211;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Postgraduate degree (increment over having BA)</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Increases 10.6%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases 12.5%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">&#8211;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for being married</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Increases 44.9%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases 56.5%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Increases 35.5%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for being male</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Increases 35.3%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">&#8211;</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">&#8211;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Adding one person to household size</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Decreases by 3.6%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Decreases by 3.4%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Decreases by 3.8%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for being Arab</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Increases 8.5%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases 9.8%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Decreases by 2.1%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for being native born (<i>sabra</i>) Israeli Jew</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Increases 7.3%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases 8.3%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Increases 2.1%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for being Ashkenazi</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Decreases by 0.1%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases 1.8%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Decreases by 3.7%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for residence in Jerusalem</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Decreases by 7.6%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Decreases by 15.4%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Decreases by 3.2%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for residence in Tel Aviv</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Increases 17.2%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases 15.0%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Increases 20.6%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for residence in Haifa</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Decreases by 13.5%.</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Decreases by 12.0%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Decreases by 15.0%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for being new immigrant (arrived since 1990)</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Decreases by 5.5%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Decreases by 7.5%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Decreases by 4.3%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Increment for being new immigrant from Africa (over previous increment for being immigrant)</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Decreases by additional 2.9%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases by 0.3%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Increase by 8.1%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Dummy if employed in &#8220;academic&#8221; profession</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Increases 45.7%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases 45.6%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Increases 45.5%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Dummy if employed as &#8220;professional&#8221;</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Increases 31.6%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases 36.3%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Increases 23.7%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Dummy if employed as &#8220;manager&#8221;</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">Increases 75.6%</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">Increases 72.2%</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">Increases 75.9%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154"></td>
<td valign="top" width="115"></td>
<td valign="top" width="104"></td>
<td valign="top" width="117"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="154">Size of sample used for estimates</td>
<td valign="top" width="115">20,069</td>
<td valign="top" width="104">10,424</td>
<td valign="top" width="117">9,703</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr style="color: #000000;" align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[1]</span> See, for example, Ayal Kimhi, &#8220;Jewish Households, Arab Households, and Income Inequality in Rural Israel: Ramifications for the Israeli-Arab Conflict,&#8221; <i>Defence and Peace Economics</i>, Aug. 2010, pp. 381-94.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[2]</span> For example, &#8220;<a href="http://adalah.org/upfiles/2011/Adalah_The_Inequality_Report_March_2011.pdf"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">The Inequality Report</span></a>: The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel,&#8221; Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Haifa, Mar. 2011.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[3]</span> <i>Digital Journal</i> (Toronto), <a href="http://digitaljournal.com/article/349233"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">May 1, 2013</span></a>.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[4]</span> Yinon Cohen, Yitzhak Haberfeld and Tali Kristal, &#8220;Ethnicity and Mixed Ethnicity: Educational Gaps among Israeli-born Jews,&#8221; <i>Ethnic and Racial Studies,</i> Sept. 1, 2007, pp. 896-917.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[5]</span> Knesset member Zehava Galon of the leftist Meretz party recently introduced a bill that would require all proposals of new legislation in Israel to contain estimates of disparate impact. See<i> Haaretz</i> (Tel Aviv), Apr. 17, 2014.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[6]</span> Ibid.<i>,</i> Sept. 12, 2012.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[7]</span> Ibid., <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/business/.premium-1.531396"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">June 23, </span></a>July 30, 2013; <i>The Jerusalem Post</i>, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Meretz-MK-Farij-attacks-racism-in-banking-system-322205"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">June 8, 2013</span></a>.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[8]</span> Thomas Sowell, &#8220;<a href="http://cascourses.uoregon.edu/geog471/pdfs/1206/sowell.pdf"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">The American Mosaic</span></a>,&#8221;<i> Ethnic America: A History</i> (New York: Basic Books, 1981).</p>
<p style="color: #2a69a1;">[9]<span style="color: #000000;"> <a href="http://www1.cbs.gov.il/popisr/table5.pdf">&#8220;Projections of population in Israel for 2010–2025, by sex, age and population group,&#8221;</a> Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv); &#8220;<a href="http://www1.cbs.gov.il/www/statistical/arab_pop08e.pdf">The Arab Population in Israel</a>,&#8221; idem, p. 2.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[10]</span> &#8220;<a href="http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/?MIval=cw_usr_view_SHTML&amp;ID=405"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">Economic Characteristics</span></a>,&#8221; Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, accessed Dec. 19, 2013.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[11]</span> &#8220;Income Survey, 2010,&#8221; Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Feb. 2012. Only people earning at least 100 NIS per month in salary are counted in the analysis below, with the others presumed to be absent from the labor force.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[12]</span> Percentages computed by author from data found here: &#8220;<a href="http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/?MIval=cw_usr_view_SHTML&amp;ID=419"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">Income of Individuals (Income survey)</span></a>,&#8221; Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Table 25.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[13]</span> Yossi Shavit and Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar, &#8220;<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/20628611"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">Ethnicity, Education, and Other Determinants of Self-Employment in Israel</span></a>,&#8221; <i>International Journal of Sociology</i>, Spring, 2001, pp. 59-91.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[14]</span> <i>Haaretz</i>, June 23, 2013.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[15]</span> See, for example, &#8220;Israel Must End Discrimination against Arab College Graduates,&#8221; <i>Haaretz</i>, June 15, 2012.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[16]</span> Pnina O. Plaut and Steven E. Plaut, &#8220;Income Disparities by Ethnicity in Israel,&#8221; <i>Israel Affairs</i>, forthcoming.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[17]</span> <a href="http://panim.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=995592&amp;sid=267"><span style="color: #2a69a1;"><i>Panim Amitiyot</i></span></a>: <i>Pirakim Milayim</i>, Aug. 22, 2013, Nana 10 web site.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[18]</span> See, for example, Noah Lewin-Epstein and Moshe Semyonov, <i>Stratification in Israel: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender</i> (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 2003), pp. 175-281; idem, &#8220;Local labor markets, ethnic segregation, and income inequality,&#8221; <i>Social Forces</i>, June 1992, pp. 1101–19; Sammy Smooha and Yohanan Peres, &#8220;The Dynamics of Ethnic Inequalities: The Case of Israel,&#8221; in Ernest Krausz, ed., <i>Studies of Israeli Society</i> (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1980), vol. no. 1.</p>
<p style="color: #2a69a1;">[19]<span style="color: #000000;"> Yehouda Shenhav, <a href="http://972mag.com/spineless-bookkeeping-the-use-of-mizrahi-jews-as-pawns-against-palestinian-refugees/56472/">&#8220;Spineless Bookkeeping: The Use of Mizrahi Jews as Pawns against Palestinian Refugees</a>,&#8221; <i>+972 e-magazine</i> (Israel), Sept. 25, 2012.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[20]</span> &#8220;Hakeshet Hademocratit Hamizrahit,&#8221; web site, accessed Dec. 10, 2013.</p>
<p style="color: #2a69a1;">[21]<span style="color: #000000;"> For example, Yitzhak Laor, &#8220;<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-glorious-state-of-israel-and-its-anti-arab-discrimination.premium-1.515462">The Glorious State of Israel and Its Anti-Arab Discrimination</a>,&#8221; <i>Ha&#8217;aretz</i>, Apr. 15, 2013.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[22]</span> Talya Steiner, <a href="http://en.idi.org.il/analysis/idi-press/publications/hebrew-policy-papers/combating-discrimination-against-arabs-in-the-israeli-workforce"><span style="color: #2a69a1;"><i>Combating Discrimination against Arabs in the Israeli Workforce</i></span></a>, Policy Paper No. 97 (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2003).</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[23]</span> <i>Haaretz</i>, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/2-000-students-owe-university-place-to-affirmative-action-1.3883"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">Nov. 19, 2009</span></a>; John Rosenberg, &#8220;Affirmative Action … In Israel,&#8221; Discriminations Blog, Sept. 3, 2002; Noga Dagan-Buzaglo, &#8220;<a href="http://www.adva.org/uploaded/Affirmative%20Action%20in%20Israel%20in%20the%20Area%20of%20Employment.pdf"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">Non-discriminatory hiring practices in Israel</span></a> towards Arab Citizens, Ethiopian Israelis and new immigrants from Bukhara and the Caucasus,&#8221; Adva Center, Tel Aviv, Nov. 2008.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[24]</span> Tal Shahor, &#8220;<a href="http://www.stat-d.si/mz/mz7.1/shahor.pdf"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">Fiscal Allotment Policy vis á vis Minorities</span></a>: An Empirical Measurement of the Way in Which Israel&#8217;s Majority Government Makes Its Fiscal Allotments to the Arab Minority,&#8221; <i>Metodološki zvezki</i> (Ljubljana, Slovenia), no. 1, 2010, pp. 73-93; Efraim Karsh, &#8220;Israel&#8217;s Arabs: Deprived or Radicalized?&#8221; <i>Israel Affairs</i>, Jan. 2013, pp. 1-19.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[25]</span> <a href="http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/"><span style="color: #2a69a1;">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</span></a>, United Nations General Assembly, New York, Dec. 10, 1948, art. 14.</p>
<p><span style="color: #2a69a1;">[26]</span> The effects of isolated changes in individual factors while holding all other factors constant. The &#8220;default&#8221; or base case upon which the ethnic increments are computed is for &#8220;Foreign-born Mizrahi Jews.&#8221; The figures in the table should be taken as the best estimate for changes in earnings caused by isolated changes in each individual explanatory factor (ethnicity, gender, and so on) while holding all other factors constant. This shows the isolated effect for Arabs, for example, on earnings while holding schooling, age, and other factors constant. The schooling variable is measured differently for the men-only column (where the effects of achieving degrees are estimated) than for the women-only column (where the effect of an additional year of schooling is estimated). The estimates allow us to see the &#8220;clean&#8221; effects or impacts of ethnicity and other factors upon earnings in Israel because these effects are statistically isolated from the many intermingled effects of the other variables. Estimates taken from regression analysis equations that are elaborated and appear in full in Pnina O. Plaut and Steven E. Plaut, &#8220;Income Disparities by Ethnicity in Israel,&#8221; <i>Israel Affairs</i>, forthcoming.</p>
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		<title>&#8216;Nakba Denial&#8217;?</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 27 May 2014 04:12:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Left's latest invention to undermine the Jewish State. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/nakba.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-226299 alignleft" alt="nakba" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/nakba-450x300.jpg" width="315" height="210" /></a>The radical Left in Israel has invented a new nonsense word to capture the essence of its agenda and ideology. The term is &#8220;Nakba Denial.&#8221; It is not accidental that it strongly resembles the term &#8220;Holocaust Denial,&#8221; for the radical anti-Israel leftists seek to create a clear moral parallel between the Holocaust and the &#8220;Nakba.&#8221; The term, Nakba, of course means catastrophe in Arabic and is tossed around by the radical Left to refer to the &#8220;catastrophe&#8221; of the creation of Israel and its victory over the genocidal Arab fascists who attempted to destroy Israel in 1948-9.</p>
<p>The Left insists that Nakba Denial proves that non-leftists are living in denial and are heartlessly indifferent to the &#8220;sufferings&#8221; of Arabs when they were on the losing side of their war of genocidal aggression against the Jews in 1948-49.</p>
<p>So having coined this new nonsense term and converted it into their banner, we thought we would suggest to the Non-Left a number of new terms that should be introduced into political discourse, terms to be used by those who are NOT seeking the extermination of Israel or a second Holocaust of Jews, to describe the real agenda of the enemies of Israel.</p>
<p>The first of these is Treason Denial. This is the term that must be applied to many of those who insist that the radical Left inside Israel is seeking human rights and peace. It is also the term that must be used to describe those who characterize picayune overseas-funded anti-Israel propaganda NGOs as &#8220;human rights groups&#8221; and &#8220;peace groups.&#8221;</p>
<p>Then we should also encourage the use of the term Leftwing Fascism Denial. It is the term that describes those who refuse to recognize that the radical Left in Israel (and elsewhere) is fundamentally opposed to freedom of speech for non-Leftists and completely opposed to democracy. It is also the term that should be applied to all those justifying the people who accuse all critics of the Radical Left of being &#8220;McCarthyists&#8221; and &#8220;fascists.&#8221;</p>
<p>The term Stalinism Denial should be applied to all those people who pretend that they are not aware of the fact that some of the most prominent members of the Tenured Left in Israel are lifelong hard-core Stalinists. A number of faculty members posting on the Israeli Social Sciences chat list are card-carrying members of the Israeli (Stalinist) Communist Party, but any attempts to mention this fact are censored by the administrators of that list.</p>
<p>But of course the most important term of all that must be introduced is Anti-Semitism Denial. This is the term needed to refer to all those who insist that members of the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement and of similar anti-Israel initiatives and movements are motivated by anything other than gutter anti-Semitism. This is the correct term that needs to be applied to all those proclaiming that they hate and oppose Israel but not Jews as such. And, come to think of it, this is also the term needed to describe anyone bandying about the term &#8220;Nakba Denial.&#8221;</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Israel&#8217;s &#8216;Price Tag&#8217; Bogeyman</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2014 04:25:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The international community finds the new "terrorists." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/F121203UL02-725x483.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225079" alt="F121203UL02-725x483" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/F121203UL02-725x483-450x299.jpg" width="315" height="209" /></a>The madness continues.  The Israeli media, the world media, the Obama administration,  and a growing number of Israeli politicians are screaming at supersonic-jet decibel levels against the &#8220;hate crimes&#8221; of the &#8220;Price Tag&#8221; delinquents. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">You will not be surprised if I tell you that the use of the term &#8220;hate crimes&#8221; by the Israeli leftist media and their fellow travelers never has anything at all to do with Arab terrorists murdering Jews.  Indeed, a young woman from Afula was murdered a few days ago and the police believe it was a political murder by Arab terrorists.  You would only learn about that murder in the back pages in small font in the far-leftist daily </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Haaretz</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, although headlines </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.haaretz.com">on the front page and throughout</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> this &#8220;newspaper&#8221; decry &#8220;hate crimes.&#8221;  Let us note that </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Haaretz</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> NEVER denounces Arab terrorism as &#8220;hate crimes.&#8221;  And it refuses to use the &#8220;T&#8221; word (terrorist) to label these folks.  Instead, following CNN and MSNBC, these are always &#8220;activists&#8221; or &#8220;militants.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The &#8220;hate crimes&#8221; over which the media and politicians are all up in arms consist of teenage mischief and graffiti.  Really.  The Obama people have also called for action against these &#8220;hate crimes.&#8221;   Small groups of Jewish teenagers have gone running about the country and engaging in petty vandalism and graffiti.  They call themselves &#8220;Price Tag.&#8221;  Their mischief is usually directed against Arab property (although in a few cases they have vandalized police and army vehicles).   Their graffiti is anti-Arab and they have targeted churches and mosques.  In a few cases, vandalism was in fact carried out by leftists and Arabs as provocations to be blamed on the Price Tag urchins.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Now I am the first to demand that these teenagers be apprehended and taken out back behind the woodshed and spanked thoroughly with a hickory switch.  Yes they are an embarrassment and yes they are up to no good.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But hate crime?  Come on!</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;Price Tag&#8221; urchins are petty juvenile delinquents.  While they have gotten away with their mischief and have not been apprehended, this may be because the police and army in Israel have real hate crimes to deal with, like genocidal terrorists.   The Price Tag punks are as much involved in &#8220;hate crimes&#8221; as are the subway graffiti vandals in any large city in the world.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Almost no one in Israel justifies the vandalism and graffiti of &#8220;Price Tag.&#8221;  But almost no one in Israel sees it as anything more than a mild nuisance and petty mischief. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">No one, that is, except for the Leftist Establishment.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Oh, and you know what ELSE is NEVER a hate crime in Israel?  Arabs burning or vandalizing synagogues.   You have not heard of such cases recently?  It is not because such incidents do not take place in Israel.  They occur all the time.  It is because the media do not report them, certainly not on page one.  After all, it is only news when the postman bites the dog.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Leftist Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni and another cabinet minister just called for declaring &#8220;Price Tag&#8221; members to be terrorists because they engage in mischief and write anti-Arab graffiti on walls.  Think they are bluffing?  Many years back the Israeli government declared the Kahanists to be a terrorist group, and their main activity back then was also writing tasteless graffiti!  A leftist lecturer at Tel Aviv University, one Meirav Alush Lavron (from Film and Television studies &#8212; yes, such a thing exists there) says that denunciation of the &#8220;Price Tag&#8221; acts of vandalism by the Israeli Government </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/.premium-1.2314951">just proves that the government is guilty</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of those.  Kind of reminds you of that famous Hebrew </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/tinfoil_brigade/not_raping_the.php">University thesis that claimed that the fact</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab women proves how racist Jews are. </span></p>
<p>Minister Livni&#8217;s call to proclaim the Price Taggers terrorists is amusing.  Since her anti-terrorism policy is basically to make concessions to terrorists and capitulate to them, then perhaps this is really her call for a full capitulation to the Price Taggers?  Politics in Israel are so confusing.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Another newspaper &#8220;report&#8221; </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.589469">here spread the rumor</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that the Price Taggers consist of 100 people who are led and inspired by the radical Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburgh.   He is a controversial character who makes statements that the Left and some not on the Left dislike.  How many of Rabbi Ginzburgh&#8217;s followers have been arrested for involvement in the mischief?  Zero.  I certainly hope he will file defamation suits against all the newspapers who claim that he commands the Price Taggers.  And the proof that they are wrong?   Clearly Price Tag does not have 100 members.  In Israel no group of 100 people can possibly keep anything secret, and anything known to 100 people is leaked into the media within minutes.  If there were 100 Price Taggers, the cops would have busted them months ago.  My guess is that Price Tag has 3 teenage members, but to be cautious I suppose I could be convinced there are as many as 5 members.   That is what all the ruckus is about.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Let me tell y&#8217;all a little story,   When I first came to Israel for an extended stay in the 1970s, all of Jerusalem and some other places were filled with leftist graffiti demanding that one Giora Neuman be freed.   Neuman was a member of the ultra-anti-Israel Maoist organization &#8220;</span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Matzpen</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.&#8221;   He was arrested for refusing to serve in the military in 1972.   His Maoist friends turned every wall in Jerusalem into a pro-Neuman billboard.  It turned out soon after this that five members of this very same </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Matzpen</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> organization were involved in anti-Israel espionage and had even undergone terrorist training in Syria.  They were led by a kibbutznik named Udi Adiv who is today a lecturer in Israel&#8217;s &#8220;Open University.&#8221;   Other </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Matzpen</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> alumni today star in the Israeli media and have professor jobs.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That of course was not the only time that far leftists engaged in graffiti incitement.   And anti-Jewish graffiti by Arabs has long been so common in Israel that it almost never makes the evening news.  In recent days lots of anti-Jewish graffiti has sprung up, probably partly in response to Price Tag mischief, and swastikas on synagogues, gravestones, and Jewish shrines have always been common vandalism in Israel.  While a few cases have been discovered where vandalism apparently by Price Tag was in fact provocations done by Arabs and leftists, I do not buy the paranoid conspiracism of some on the Israeli Right that all the Price Tag vandalism is being done as Black Ops by the section of the General Security Services that persecutes right-wingers.    </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The remarkable thing to note is that not a single one of the big mouth postureurs denouncing Price Tag vandalism as terrorism and hate crimes has ever denounced leftist or Arab graffiti and vandalism in the same words.  </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Haaretz</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> has never called for making apprehension of the anti-Jewish graffiti vandals or swastika painters the highest national priority.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Oh, and the selective assault against speech also continues.  Consider this news item from the Jerusalem Post, May 8: &#8220;A 22-year-old woman – who was detained on Wednesday and then freed to house arrest – wrote: &#8216;I am in favor of throwing stones, even if it would cause the death of a soldier.&#8217;”   She had posted that on Facebook.  That is right &#8211; she was arrested.  Now I happen to disagree vehemently with her words and would like to see fire hoses turned on people who throw stones at soldiers.  So guess who has never been arrested?   The countless Arabs, including Arab politicians, who call for throwing rocks at soldiers and Jewish babies and doing far worse things than that.  Neither have the leftist professors calling for settlers to be murdered by terrorists.   Neither have the &#8220;anarchists&#8221; who regularly assault Israeli police and soldiers violently and not just with rocks.</span></p>
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		<title>Trivializing the Shoah and Fabricating an African &#8216;Holocaust&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/trivializing-the-shoah-and-fabricating-an-african-holocaust/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=trivializing-the-shoah-and-fabricating-an-african-holocaust</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/trivializing-the-shoah-and-fabricating-an-african-holocaust/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Apr 2014 04:46:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genocide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Holocaust]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shoah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[slave trade]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224405</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Downplaying the significance of the Jewish Holocaust. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/907014-holocaust-survivor.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224410" alt="907014-holocaust-survivor" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/907014-holocaust-survivor-450x316.jpg" width="315" height="221" /></a>In recent decades a new trend of Holocaust trivialization has developed.  While not quite as obscene as Holocaust Deniers claiming that the Holocaust was all some sort of hoax, these fabricators are morally the next best thing.  They claim that the Holocaust of Jews by the Nazis may have been quite horrific but it pales in magnitude when compared with the &#8220;other Holocausts&#8221; of even greater dimensions.  And increasingly the &#8220;other Holocaust&#8221; to which they point is the &#8220;genocide&#8221; of Africans in the slave trade. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">After all, argue the &#8220;other Holocaust&#8221; propagandists, in World War II there were &#8220;only&#8221; six million Jews murdered, but a far larger number of Africans were murdered as part and parcel of the slave trade.  Such pseudo-historic nonsense has been repeated so often that it is finding its way into mainstream textbooks and media.  Even Israeli leftist columnists are citing the &#8220;African Holocaust,&#8221; illustrated by one column I cited earlier this week by a radical hater of his own country.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The &#8220;African Holocaust Lobby&#8221; likes to toss out numbers purportedly estimating the population killed during the African slave trade, starting at around 10 million and often going as high as 60 million.  This allows the Holocaust trivializers to dismiss demands that the Jewish Shoah be commemorated, since it was &#8220;only one sixth&#8221; the magnitude of the &#8220;African genocide.&#8221;    </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The &#8220;60 million&#8221; number appears to have been originally invented by American Afrofascists, militant black racists and race hucksters.  The number however has been repeated so often that it is showing up in books and media.  Consider </span>&#8220;Critical Pedagogy and Cognition: An Introduction to a Postformal Educational Psychology,&#8221; <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">written by a psychologist</span><b style="line-height: 1.5em;">, </b><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Curry Malott, Springer Publishers, 2011.  Malott is no historian and certainly no demographer, yet he speaks about 60 million Africans killed in the &#8220;slave trade genocide.&#8221;  A more widely cited book referring to the &#8220;60 million&#8221; is one by a pseudo-historian at the University of Hawaii, one David Stannard, Professor of American Studies,  in his book </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">American Holocaust</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> (published 1992 by Oxford University Press).  He estimates a 75-80% mortality rate in slave trade transit to come up with his number.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So what are we to make of all this?  Let us begin by pointing out how absurd the claims about a 60 million victim African genocide are.  The number not only exceeds the total number of Africans enslaved (not just those sold in the American colonies and then the US) by a factor of six.  Indeed, the 60 million number exceeds the entire population of sub-Sahara Africa in the 18th century, when the slave trade was at its height.  In </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Concise Economic History of the World</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by R. Cameron, it is estimated that the entire population of the African continent in 1800 was about 90 million people, but a large portion of those were non-black people living in the Arab areas of North Africa.  That leaves the entire sub-Saharan population at less than the fictional 60 million &#8220;genocide victims&#8221; supposedly murdered in the slave trade.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So while it is simple poppycock to toss around numbers like 60 million as estimates of the human cost of the slave trade, just how many Africans were </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">really </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">intentionally murdered as part of the slave trade?   The answer is &#8211; almost none.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Now nothing here is meant to diminish the suffering and human tragedy of slavery in the era of slave trading.   I have no desire to excuse or minimize the horrors of trafficking in and ownership of slaves, nor of the commodification of humans as chattel and property.    </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">All I am demanding is the use of common sense.  Once a human has been turned into property, then all of the incentives and economic behavior associated with all forms of property ownership kick in.  The simple fact of the matter is that once an African was enslaved, and no doubt some violence was involved in the capture of those slaves in Africa, then that African became property, an asset, something of pecuniary value, something worth preserving.  The owners of that property, and this includes the slave traders and shippers, had enormous motivation to preserve and protect the value of that property!  Ironically, this is what saved the lives of those slaves.  A live slave could be worth a fortune, while a dead slave was worth nothing.  While slave owners hardly had reason to treat their slaves with respect and dignity, neither did they have any reason to see their slaves maimed or killed.  Such injury and death represented a tremendous capital loss!  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Slave ship owners had as much motive to preserve intact their cargoes of human property as they would for any other cargo.  No ship owner would intentionally allow cargoes of gold, silver, whale oil, molasses, or tobacco to be damaged or harmed, and the same selfish property preservation motivation operated for slaves.  Once purchased in slave auctions, the slave represented a capital investment, one whose loss would impose financial losses on its owners. </span></p>
<p>This is not to say that no slaves at all died during the transit from Africa to the Americas.  Cross-oceanic voyages were dangerous during the era of the slave trade, and deaths during those voyages were a clear and present danger for all, and not just the slaves.  Free persons immigrating to the Americans from Europe were also at risk during the voyages.  If anything, ship owners had <i>more</i> motivation to protect the bodies and health of the slave cargo than they did for simple ticket-holding passengers.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The life of a slave was one of misery and suffering.  But once in slavery in the Americas, the property value of the slave continued to protect him from death and serious injury.   In the books by Thomas Sowell, it is described how plantation owners and other owners of slaves would employ Irish day laborers to do the really dangerous tasks, preferring not to risk their &#8220;property&#8221; in the form of African slaves. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">From the perspective of the 21th century, none of this takes away any of our sense of horror at the sufferings of slaves during the era of the slave trade.   Some Africans were no doubt murdered in the process of capturing slaves, controlling slaves, and others died as a result of the hazards of oceanic shipment.  Medical knowledge and technology were of the most primitive form, and on-ship conditions were quite miserable.  Death was common for all aboard ships, and I have seen estimates that in some of the more famous exploration trips, over a third of the crews died of disease and starvation.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But genocide?  An African &#8220;Holocaust&#8221;?   There was no such thing.    </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The fabricators of the fictional &#8220;African slave-trade Holocaust&#8221; may be driven by an urge to exaggerate the sufferings of the slave era in order to make a moral or political point.   A bit like the myriad forms of &#8220;advocacy statistics&#8221; that plague the modern world regarding so many other &#8220;causes&#8221; and issues.  But the truly malignant effect of the fabricators is to serve to trivialize the only real Holocaust.</span></p>
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		<title>The Swastika Passport</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/the-swastika-passport/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-swastika-passport</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Apr 2014 04:30:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[germany]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nazi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[passport]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[swastika]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yaakov Frommer]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Remembering one family's incredible story of survival in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ruth_Tirbauer_1938-12-Klein-r100.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224248" alt="Ruth_Tirbauer_1938-12-Klein-r100" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ruth_Tirbauer_1938-12-Klein-r100.jpg" width="285" height="218" /></a>The story of Yaakov Frommer, his Swastika Passport, and the personal intervention by Winston Churchill is told in the weekly magazine &#8220;<i>Matzav Ruach</i>,&#8221; which is one of the pamphlets distributed in Israel through synagogues on the sabbath.  It is not available online.  I am about to summarize the story in my words, although nothing is original here and I am simply paraphrasing the story as it appears in the pamphlet.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In the 1930s the Frommer family lived in Haifa.  The father was Dov Frommer, who &#8211; with his wife &#8211; had made aliyah to Eretz Israel in 1935 from Olkusz, a small town in southern Poland.  He lived with his wife Leah Rosa and their two small sons.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In 1939, Leah Rosa felt an irresistible yearning to return for a visit to her home town in Poland to see her family there. She decided to take her two sons with her.  She was in the early stages of pregnancy.  They sailed from Mandatory Palestine, that is, the British-ruled colony in Eretz Israel, arriving in Danzig, the German port city on Poland&#8217;s Baltic coast.  It was after the Munich accord, and after the German aggression against Czechoslovakia.   It was also smack in the middle of the days of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, when Hitler and Stalin were plotting to conquer and divide Poland between themselves.   Leah Rosa felt safe, since she was traveling on British papers.  As residents of Mandatory Palestine, they were citizens of the British Empire, and Great Britain was not yet at war.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It was only four days after the mother and children reached Olkusz when the Nazis invaded Poland.  Hours later Britain declared war and the family was marooned in the heart of the territory in which the Holocaust would reach its most horrific dimensions.  There were no ways in or out. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The father of the family, Dov, began a feverish campaign of letter writing with the British authorities to try to win the release of his family in what was now German-annexed Polish territory, in essence part of the Third Reich.  The months dragged on. Leah Rosa gave birth there to her third son, naming him Yaakov.  But the situation was deteriorating and getting more desperate.  The Jews of Olkusz were ordered to wear yellow stars and move into a part of the town that would serve as a ghetto.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In 1940 a glimmer of hope appeared on the horizon.  There were numerous civilians from the British Empire that were stranded in the territories conquered by Germany, but there were also German civilians in the British Empire.  In particular, &#8220;Palestine&#8221; held a large population of German &#8220;Templers.&#8221;  These were German Protestant pietists who had migrated to &#8220;Palestine&#8221; in the 19th century and set up several colonies, including in Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem.  In the 1930s many of these became devoted Nazis and, bizarre as it sounds, there were pro-Nazi marches complete with swastikas and Heil Hitlers on the streets of Israeli cities, organized by these Germans. </span></p>
<p>Negotiations began for exchanges of the stranded civilians of the two sides.  The US, still a neutral power, aided the efforts. In particular, a deal was in the offing for an exchange of German Templer civilians, mainly women and children, for civilians from Mandatory Palestine in Poland.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">There was a snag, however.  While Leah Rosa and her two older sons were citizens of the British Empire, having been born in &#8220;Palestine,&#8221; the youngest child, Yaakov, was not.  He had been born in German-annexed Poland and the Germans were unwilling to acknowledge him as a British national.  He was also not a Polish national, since Poland had ceased to exist.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The father back in Haifa was conducting frantic correspondence with the authorities in London.  Somewhat incredibly, Winston Churchill himself took a personal interest in the family&#8217;s plight and wrote to the father in his own handwriting.  (A photo of the letter appears in the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Matzav Ruach</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> pamphlet upon which I am relying.)   Fearing the barbarism that was clearly approaching, relatives in Poland urged Leah Rosa to take the two older boys and escape for freedom, leaving the baby in their care, but the mother would hear nothing of it.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Eventually a deal was reached under which the baby Yaakov, officially a citizen of German-ruled Poland, would be allowed to leave with the rest of his family.   Relatives in the Olkusz ghetto still felt relatively safe in those days, as the mass exterminations had not yet begun, and suggested to Leah Rosa that perhaps she might be better off staying there with them rather than going off to the backwaters of &#8220;Palestine&#8221; with its many dangers and acts of barbarism about which they had heard.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It was shortly after Pearl Harbor when the family was allowed to escape as part of the exchange of the stranded populations.  They reached Vienna, and from there took a ship down the Danube to the Bulgarian coast of the Black Sea, and from there reached home.  Baby Yaakov Frommer had been equipped with a special Nazi passport, issued by the Reich authorities in control of Poland.  It featured the Nazi eagle emblem and swastikas.  From its serial number, it was the very first passport issued by the Nazi authorities in Poland.   Yaakov made aliyah on a Nazi passport, complete with swastikas. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Once reunited in Haifa, the family resumed life as normal.  Yaakov grew up to be an electronics technician.  His oldest brother became a scientist at the Weizmann Institute, specializing in water treatment.  The middle brother became an air force navigator, headed an air force training school, and was captured during the Yom Kippur war when his plane fell in Lebanon.   A fourth younger son was born later and became a well-known psychologist.   The father of the family was one of the founders of the religious neighborhood Kiryat Shmuel near Haifa and was a principal at its religious high school.  Four years ago, Leah Rosa passed away at the age of 98.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Baby Yaakov, today 74 years old, allowed the magazine to photograph his swastika passport.   </span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Lessons for Israel From America&#8217;s Civil War in Coping With Treason</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/lessons-for-israel-from-americas-civil-war-in-coping-with-treason/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=lessons-for-israel-from-americas-civil-war-in-coping-with-treason</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Mar 2014 04:41:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[civil war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sedition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[treason]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The price Israelis should pay for disloyalty and sedition. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/treason.png"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-221897" alt="treason" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/treason.png" width="310" height="233" /></a>Israel is currently under a worldwide assault, one whose foundations are anti-Semitism.  The campaign of demonization and delegitimizing has many forms, including the economic warfare of the &#8220;<a href="http://www.pacbi.com/" target="_blank">Boycott, Divest, Sanctions</a>&#8221; movement or <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/A-Fresh-Perspective-Time-to-fight-back-345496" target="_blank">BDS</a>.  The goal of the campaign is the annihilation of Israel and its population, and victory for the movement of Arab terrorism and Islamofascism.</p>
<p dir="LTR">It is impossible to understand fully this assault against Israel and the Jews without an appreciation of the role of Israeli leftwing traitors, collaborating with anti-Israel Arab nationalists.  From the beginning, the initiatives calling for worldwide boycotts of Israel have come from a small group of disloyal radical leftist Israelis, many of them holding tenured positions at Israeli universities.  These lead the calls for boycotts against their own country and their own employers.  They provide a figleaf of respectability for anti-Semites around the world who can claim that even &#8220;progressive&#8221; Israelis are endorsing their campaign to boycott Israel and Israeli institutions.  The disloyal tenured radicals are also the inventors of the canard that Israel is an apartheid regime.  They are the moral equivalents of Vichy French and other European collaborators with Nazi Germany during World War II.  Their aim is to provide legitimacy, aid and comfort to the enemies of their own country.</p>
<p dir="LTR">The belligerence of the Israeli Radical Left is not restricted to endorsements of BDS.  Radical Leftists in Israel have led campaigns for mutiny and insurrection among soldiers designed to persuade Israelis to refuse to serve in the military.  The Radical Left wants to impose its political agenda on the country undemocratically, by conditioning army service on the adoption of its own political agenda.  (Some rightwing groups have also called upon Israelis to refuse to serve in the military unless their own political agenda is adopted.)  In some cases, the radical Leftists have openly endorsed terrorism and violence.  In almost all cases the Radical Left opposes freedom of speech for non-leftists.</p>
<p dir="LTR">The Israeli government has always coddled the disloyal radicals and excused their behavior as protected speech.  But as the world campaign of anti-Semitic aggression against Israel escalates, it is increasingly clear that something must be done about the treason involving Israeli radical leftists.  Simply stated, Israelis who call for BDS warfare against Israel should have their own property seized, sequestered, and confiscated by the state.</p>
<p dir="LTR">Too radical, you say?  Undemocratic?   Well, think again.  The effective means by which Israel can deal with its own Fifth Column may be learned from the history of another great democracy &#8211; the United States &#8211; in coping with disloyalty.  It is time for Israel to deal with sedition the same way that Abraham Lincoln and the Union did.</p>
<p dir="LTR">Shortly after the American Civil War broke out, both the Union and the Confederacy passed confiscation laws that seized the property of those living in the territories of the enemy belligerent.  Penalties for disloyalty <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0005.103/--lincoln-administration-and-arbitrary-arrests?rgn=main;view=fulltext" target="_blank">were not restricted</a> to seizure of property. The Confederacy&#8217;s law was called the Sequestration Law and, if anything, went even further than the Confiscation Act of the Union.[1]</p>
<p dir="LTR">The Confiscation Bill S151 of 1862, which replaced a weaker similar American law from 1861 (passed right after the first Battle of Bull Run), was largely the initiative of Lyman Trumbull.  He was a Republican Senator from Illinois and chairman of the Senate&#8217;s Judiciary Committee.  He was from a middle class family that traced its origin back to the earliest settlers in New England, and he was a descendent of the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather.  After studying law, he settled in the Illinois western wilderness, and forged early close personal ties with Abraham Lincoln.   He built a reputation as a highly skilled and intelligent state legislator, and was a moderate on the controversial issues of the day, including abolition.  He first served as a representative in the state legislature of the pro-South Democrat Party, but later joined Lincoln in the newly-created Republican Party, where he was disliked by the more radical members of the party due to his moderation.</p>
<p dir="LTR">Trumball&#8217;s confiscation law authorized the permanent seizure of all property of anyone involved in treason against the Union, including notably anyone considered to be offering &#8220;aid and comfort&#8221; to the enemies of the United States.  The property in question could be located either in the North or the South, and could be seized without due process.  There would be no compensation whatsoever for any property confiscated.   The message was: endorse the enemy of your country and forfeit your property!</p>
<p dir="LTR">&#8220;Property&#8221; included lands, business assets, securities and bank accounts.  The law allowed for seizure of assets left as bequests by northerners to family members living in the south.  Where a person was considered to be disloyal but his heirs were not, the government would seize dominion over the property as a &#8220;life estate,&#8221; one lasting as long as that person himself lived, to revert later to his heirs after his death.  Conservative legislators who were concerned with due process and uncomfortable with the constitutional implications of complete seizure of property without trial found the idea of seizing a life estate in rebel property to be entirely acceptable.  The Act&#8217;s orders for seizure of property were made more popular when it explicitly included slaves as &#8220;property&#8221; that could be seized without trial and without compensation (and freed) by the forces of the United States.</p>
<p dir="LTR">Trumbull was subject to much criticism by more radical politicians for not going further in confiscating the property of supporters of the Confederacy.  For example, his bill did not allow wholesale seizure of property of slave owners in the &#8220;border states&#8221; that had not seceded from the Union, and provided for compensation when any property would be seized from people in those areas.  Trumbull was the leading advocate of the doctrine of &#8220;dual sovereignty,&#8221;  which held that those supporting the Confederacy retained certain rights and privileges of citizenship, but at the same time they could be treated in some ways as enemy belligerents.  In his words, &#8220;We may treat them as traitors and we may treat them as enemies, and we have the right of both belligerent and sovereign so far as they are concerned.&#8221;</p>
<p dir="LTR">The Confiscation Acts at the time were considered quite moderate and restrained because of American experience and policies during the War of Independence.  During that War, a significant portion of the population was &#8220;Loyalist&#8221; and supporting Great Britain against American independence.  Every one of the original thirteen colonies that were to form the United States confiscated the property of &#8220;Loyalists&#8221; without trial, and in many cases the Loyalists themselves were expelled <i>en masse</i> from the territories of the United States.  Disloyalty had been regarded as legal grounds for seizure of property under English law going as far back as 1351.</p>
<p dir="LTR">In some areas American confiscation began as early as 1775.  In November of 1777 the Continental Congress recommended that all colonies seize all property of Loyalists without compensation and sell it at auction.  Among the most enthusiastic supporters of this wholesale confiscation were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.   Large swaths of land were confiscated in New York and it is estimated that 11% of the property in Boston was seized.  &#8220;Loyalists&#8221; opposed to Independence were considered to have forfeited all rights of protection for their property.   After the war ended, no compensation was made to previous owners of &#8220;Loyalist&#8221; property, with limited exceptions in Vermont and Massachusetts.</p>
<p dir="LTR">Later chapters in American history also saw rigorous measures taken against manifestations of disloyalty.  These ranged from the banning of the pro-Nazi German American Bund in 1941 to the wholesale internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II.  <a href="http://www.gaic.info/internment_camp.html" target="_blank">Ethnic Germans</a> and <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/FittipaldiD/restrictions-on-italian-americans-during-world-war-ii" target="_blank">Italians in the United States</a> <a href="http://expelledgermans.org/germaninternment.htm" target="_blank">were also interned</a>, <a href="http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2034&amp;context=etd_hon_theses" target="_blank">although in fewer</a> numbers.  Before that, the Sedition Act of 1918 (repealed in 1920) implemented a wide range of penalties for disloyalty, including imprisonment up to 20 years.  Public figures opposing service in the military and promoting refusal to serve were jailed for sedition, including Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party of America.</p>
<p dir="LTR">The lessons for Israel from all this are clear.   Radical leftist Israelis, including tenured traitors, who endorse BDS economic warfare against their own country, should be forced to pay a price for their disloyalty and sedition.  Those Israelis who are endeavoring to cause economic and financial harm to their own country because of their animosity towards it should suffer harm to their own economic interests.  Those who attempt to undermine the willingness of citizens to serve in the military should be subject to personal sanctions, whether they be from the Left or Right.</p>
<p dir="LTR">Most important of all, it is high time that Israel gets serious about dealing with treason and sedition.</p>
<div>
<div>
<p dir="LTR">[1]  Much of the historic material presented here is based upon Daniel W. Hamilton&#8217;s &#8220;The Limits of Sovereignty,&#8221; University of Chicago Press, 2007.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>John Kerry&#8217;s Palestinian Delusions</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/john-kerrys-palestinian-delusions/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=john-kerrys-palestinian-delusions</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Mar 2014 04:10:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arafat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recognition]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221131</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The PLO already recognized Israel as a Jewish State? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/John-Kerry.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-221132 alignleft" alt="John-Kerry" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/John-Kerry.jpg" width="300" height="241" /></a>When Shimon Peres and his junta began the Oslo &#8220;process,&#8221; the &#8220;deal&#8221; with the Palestinians was supposed to be that Israel would recognize the PLO as a legitimate side to the conflict and as representative of the &#8220;Palestinian People&#8221; in exchange for the PLO recognizing the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Israel did, and the PLO did not. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The idiocy of Oslo is evident in the fact that here we are &#8211; two decades later &#8211; and still arguing over whether the &#8220;Palestinian Authority&#8221; needs to recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state. The latest twist is that The Crimean Crybaby, John Kerry, does not see any reason why the &#8220;Palestinians&#8221; need to recognize Israel at all.  Instead, Israel should just keep making concessions to them, and should abandon the completely unreasonable demand that the &#8220;Palestinians&#8221; recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Moreover, Kerry has a new invention.  He claims that Yassir Arafat actually recognized Israel twice as a Jewish state.  He found evidence of these in old video clips.  Well, evidently no one bothered to let Arafat know that he had done so.  Let us recall that Arafat never changed the &#8220;Palestinian Covenant&#8221; that demanded that all of Israel be exterminated.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Kerry is simply deconstructing some old speeches of Arafat and twisting the words to make it appear like Arafat recognized Israel. No doubt he found something like Arafat saying that all the people in the Jewish state need to be thrown into the sea, and Kerry understands from this that Arafat &#8220;recognized the Jewish state.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Now if indeed Arafat really HAD recognized Israel as a legitimate Jewish state, then there would be no reason whatsoever for Israel to make concessions and abandon the demand that Abu Mazen and his horde also recognize Israel as a legitimate Jewish state.  If Arafat has already recognized Israel, what does the Palestinian Authority lose from doing the same?  Let Abu Mazen proclaim three times a day that not only is Israel a Jewish state but it is </span><b style="line-height: 1.5em;"><i>legitimate</i></b><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that Israel be a Jewish state.  If he were to do so, surely the Israeli electorate would then be happy to conduct negotiations and make more concessions.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In fact, of course, Abu Mazen and the rest of the Terrorocracy proclaim three times a day that they will NEVER recognize Israel as a Jewish state.  So even if Arafat HAD recognized Israel, which he hadn&#8217;t, this would be completely irrelevant.  Kerry&#8217;s conclusion is that Israel has to stop its obstinate insistence on being recognized by the &#8220;Palestinians.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If Netanyahu had an ounce of self-dignity and intelligence, he would announce that until Abu Mazen starts proclaiming three times a day that Israel is a legitimate Jewish state (and not simply proclaim that it is </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">de facto</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> an empirical Jewish state), then Israel will shut off all the utilities, including electricity and water, to all areas under the rule of the Palestinian Authority, deny all residents of those areas the right of passage through Israel and the right to work in Israel, and will freeze all their bank accounts. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">How is that for a response to a refusal to recognize Israel? If Kerry whines about it, Netanyahu can simply point out that he is responding the exact same way that Abraham Lincoln responded to Confederates who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Union!</span></p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s</strong> video interview with<b> Mudar Zahran, </b>a leader of Palestinians in Jordan who has been living in exile in the UK since 2010. He calls out John Kerry on the &#8220;Peace&#8221; Plan and asks why a U.S. Secretary of State is threatening Israel to commit suicide:<br />
</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2AjTjpmC5q4" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Israeli Left Pursues the Treason Vote</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/the-israeli-left-pursues-the-treason-vote/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-israeli-left-pursues-the-treason-vote</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Feb 2014 05:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lawyers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pensions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[terrorists]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219448</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How dare anyone deny terrorists and their families the benefits of welfare payments! ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/abbas.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-219530" alt="abbas" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/abbas-450x253.jpg" width="315" height="177" /></a>It has long been Israel&#8217;s answer to merging Orwell with Chelm, the mythical town of amusing stupidity in Jewish folklore.  For years, the Israeli government has provided social security and other social welfare payments to convicted Arab terrorists and murderers.  If an Arab otherwise entitled to unemployment insurance, welfare payments, pensions, or other &#8220;social&#8221; payments happens to engage in terrorism and happens to be imprisoned, he and his family continue to receive the welfare payments.  If the terrorist dies, his dependents collect survivor benefits, like orphans in the US whose parent has passed away but was covered by social security.  Terrorists disabled while planting bombs or attacking Jews could collect disability insurance stipends.</p>
<p>In 2012, an initiative was begun in the Knesset led by David Rotem (from the Yisrael Beitenu party), to cut the stipends and pensions paid to convicted murderers and terrorists by 50%.  That is correct – the Knesset was only one-half working against welfare support for terrorists, by preserving only half of the stupidest idea in human history.  Rotem wanted to eliminate the Paychecks for Terrorists Program altogether but there was too much opposition from the rest of the Knesset and the government&#8217;s pin-headed lawyers. Israel&#8217;s Ministry of Justice bureaucrats opposed any reduction in the welfare benefits for the mass murderers.  It would be unjust, you see.  Insensitive to the needs of the families of the terrorists.  The Israeli Left denounced the initiative as &#8220;anti-democratic.&#8221;</p>
<p>This past week a related initiative in the Knesset sought to deny pensions to convicted terrorists freed from prison, such as in any of those mind-numbingly stupid &#8220;prisoner exchanges&#8221; in which Israel sets the mass murderers free to wander the avenues and byways.  The bill does not really strip them of welfare payments  altogether, it just says they cannot start collecting benefits until the full prison term to which they had been sentenced is finished.  That way they cannot collect early if they are released before the end of the sentence.</p>
<p>What is amazing is that the Israeli Left voted <em>against</em> the bill. How dare anyone deny terrorists and their families the benefits of Israeli welfare payments!  The Menshevik Israeli Labor Party voted <em>against</em> the bill, showing that its  electoral strategy seems to be to challenge the ultra-leftist Meretz party over which party will attract the most votes from the treason constituency.  But even within the Netanyahu coalition, there were dissidents who voted against the bill and in favor of the terrorists.</p>
<p>In particular, Amram Mitzna <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/177678#.UwdZivmSz-q">voted for the terrorists</a>.  Mitzna is now a member of Tzipi Livni&#8217;s party, which is part of the Netanyahu coalition.  This is the same Mitzna who once was a contender for Prime Minister from Labor, and before that served as the Third-Worldish mayor of Haifa.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the Israeli Left continues to endorse boycotts and more boycotts against Israel.  In some cases it claims it &#8220;only&#8221; wants boycotts directed against settlements, and in other cases it supports world-wide boycotts against all of Israel.  Since all of Israel built and maintains the &#8220;settlements,&#8221; there really is not much of a difference. Ex-Meretz Kommissar Yossi &#8220;Call Me Ishmael&#8221; Sarid is the latest to endorse boycotts, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.575481">writing in Haaretz</a> this week.</p>
<p>It needs to be emphasized that these endorsements of anti-Israel boycotts show how fundamentally anti-democratic the Israeli Left is.   The Israeli Left has failed miserably over decades to persuade the Israeli electorate and public of the correctness of its &#8220;ideas.&#8221;  Since the vast majority of Israelis REJECT the platform of the Left, the Leftists stoop to anti-democratic means &#8211; by attempting to get their anti-Israel friends all over the world to subvert Israeli sovereignty and impose the will of the tiny Israeli Leftist minority on the country through extortion and economic warfare.</p>
<p>There is no difference between boycotts of settlements and boycotts of all of Israel.   A democratic Left would attempt to peddle its opinions in the Israeli marketplace of ideas and try to persuade the Israeli public of the correctness of its positions.  If successful, the voters would elect governments who would force the &#8220;settlers&#8221; to leave the &#8220;occupied territories.&#8221;    The &#8220;settlers&#8221; are where they are because the Israeli government and the bulk of the electorate want them to be there, in &#8220;settlements.&#8221;   The economic warfare against &#8220;settlements&#8221; is in fact a program of aggression against the electorate who decided to have &#8220;settlements&#8221; constructed and maintained in the first place, and who continue to wish these &#8220;settlements&#8221; to thrive and grow.   The settlements are the will of the Israeli people and the voting public.</p>
<p>The boycotters, including their amen chorus within the radical Left in Israel, are opposed to democratic rule.  They want to strip the Israeli electorate of its rights of sovereignty.  They want to coerce the country into accepting a program endorsed by perhaps two or three percent of Israelis and opposed by the rest.  The Left insists that removal of &#8220;settlements&#8221; is the path to peace.  But the rest of Israelis think that removal of settlements simply eliminates all obstacles to the erection of a new Islamofascist terrorist entity in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, one that will be used by the terrorists to launch endless massive rocket and missile attacks against the Jews.</p>
<p>Israelis who are <em>not</em> part of the tiny Leftist fringe see the settlements as mine canaries that measure the true intentions of &#8220;Palestinians.&#8221;   They also believe that Israelis have at least as much of a right to live in &#8220;settlements&#8221; in Judea and Samaria (the &#8220;West Bank&#8221;) as Arabs have to live inside Israel.   The Jews are the true indigenous population of the Land of Israel and they are no more &#8220;occupiers&#8221; when they live in the West Bank than Native Americans are when they live in North America.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>The Witch-Hunters of the Israeli Left</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/the-witch-hunters-of-the-israeli-left/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-witch-hunters-of-the-israeli-left</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Feb 2014 05:10:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Campus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Free Speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217833</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Free speech for communists, but not for pro-Israel Zionists. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/maxresdefault.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217842" alt="maxresdefault" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/maxresdefault-442x350.jpg" width="309" height="245" /></a>For the past couple of weeks the Radical Left in Israel has been screaming about the &#8220;right&#8221; of communist teacher Adam Verete, employed as a civics teacher in a northern Israeli high school, to turn his classroom into an anti-Israel indoctrination center.  He used his classroom time to urge his students to refuse to serve in the Israeli military.  In other words, the Left insists the communist teacher has the &#8220;right&#8221; to advocate law breaking in his classroom, all in the name of freedom of speech.  After launching an investigation of the teacher, the ORT school system, to which his school belongs, at the insistence of the Minister of Eductaion, merely slapped Verete&#8217;s wrist and did nothing.  Had Verete been a &#8220;Kahanist&#8221; using his classroom to advocate his agenda, he would have been dismissed faster than you can say Jiminy Cricket, and probably also jailed.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The leading far Leftists defending the right of Verete to indoctrinate in the classroom include <a href="http://new.bostonreview.net/BR21.3/Tamir.html">Yuli Tamir</a>, w</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">ho once led the campaign to fire a different teacher (and rabbi), Yisrael Shiran, because Shiran wrote a letter OUTSIDE HIS CLASSROOM with which Tamir disagreed.  Shiran in that letter claimed that the school curriculum was improperly teaching the controversial ideas of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as unchallengeable dogma.  He was dismissed for this &#8220;crime&#8221; at the initiative of Tamir, but later sued the Ministry of Education for wrongful dismissal and won a large damages award.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Other defenders of the communist teacher include those Israeli &#8220;intellectuals&#8221;  and &#8220;academics&#8221; who insisted that the Nobel Prize-holding Prof. Yisrael Aumann be proclaimed a pariah undeserving of an honorary PhD because he holds opinions disliked by the Left.  Many of the same leftists defending the &#8220;right&#8221; of Verete also lead the campaign to indict and prosecute rabbis who wrote a controversial book; they insist these rabbis are guilty of the thought crime of expressing opinions that the Left considers to be &#8220;intolerant.&#8221;   And a great many of these leftists were among those who demanded that the freedom of speech of non-leftists be suppressed after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin based on their &#8220;theory&#8221; holding that non-leftists exercising freedom of speech produce murder.  It goes without saying that not a single leftist in Israel has ever protested the selective denial of free speech rights to &#8220;Kahanists.&#8221;  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While the radical Left in Israel has a very long record of demanding that the freedom of speech of non-leftists be suppressed, one of the most outrageous examples of the anti-democratic assault by the Left has been ignored in recent years and overlooked in the debate over freedom of speech in recent days.  It involves the case of Prof. Nahum Rakover.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Rakover is retired professor of law from Bar Ilan and Tel Aviv Universities and now serves as president of a small college in Israel.  In the past he served also as deputy attorney general.  He is an expert in Jewish law.  In the early 1990s he held a side position as deputy legal advisor for the government of Israel, this in the days of the Rabin-Peres government and the initiation of Oslo appeasement.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It was at this time that Israel’s Supreme Court made a controversial ruling recognizing homosexual &#8220;marriages,&#8221; when it ordered El Al to allow a gay steward to receive a spousal ticket for his partner.  The judges in that learned opinion cited Michel Foucault, gay Marxist deconstructionist and pseudo-philosopher, as a legal basis for the decision. The Court&#8217;s decision was written by leftist Justice <a href="http://anneinpt.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/haaretz-reporter-uri-blau-to-be-indicted-for-possessing-classified-documents/">Dalia Dorner</a>.  (She later prevented the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3262325.stm">defamation suit</a> proceeding against Arab propagandist and film maker Mohammed Bakri for falsely claiming that Israeli soldiers carried out atrocities in the Battle of Jenin.)</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Knesset (parliament) then held hearings on the Dorner decision about the stewards.   In these hearings, Rakover was invited in to say what Jewish Law and the Torah think of gay marriage. Rakover answered truthfully that the Torah considers it an abomination and that granting a spouse ticket to a gay partner is no different from giving it to someone practicing bestiality with his dog.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That sent the PC camp into ionospheric orbit.  The Left launched a merciless venomous ad hominem assault against Rakover, demanding his dismissal from his civil service post.  It should be noted that Rakover did not even state his OWN opinion about &#8220;gay marriage,&#8221; only the Torah’s, a task for which he was getting paid as part of his job.  The real issue of course is not whether you agree with the opinion described by Rakover.  The real issue is whether Rakover or the Torah have the right to hold an unfashionable opinion about anything.  The Israeli Left unanimously said no!</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Within days, Professor Itzhak Galnoor, a Hebrew university leftist from political science, who had earlier been a Peace Now leader, attacked Rakover.   Galnoor, today part of the semi-Marxist <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/Varieties-Marxism-Jerusalem-Leer-Foundation/11196992329/bd">Van Leer Institute</a>, has long advocated the position that any criticism of the Radical anti-Israel Left or questioning of its motives amounts to &#8220;McCarthyism&#8221; and should be suppressed.  See <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Steven%20Plaut%20-%20Itzhak%20Galnoor%20-%20The%20Leftwing%20McCarthyism.htm">this</a>.   Galnoor was at the time serving as the Labor Party-appointed head of the civil service, a position from which he introduced affirmative action quotas and dumbed-down standards.   Galnoor opened up internal persecution of Rakover in the civil service and led the campaign to get him dismissed from his position.  Demands for the dismissal of Rakover also filled the leftist press.  Among those demanding that Rakover be prevented from exercising his freedom of speech were the far-leftist Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), whose current <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11860">president</a> is a Stalinist,  and Tel Aviv University Prof. Asa Kasher, who claims to be an expert on ethics.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Rakover’s reputation and name were dragged through the mud by the anti-democratic McCarthyist Left.  Never mind that he is one of Israel’s greatest legal minds and was only stating what appears in black and white in the Torah.  Citing the Torah became in effect a hate crime in PC Israel.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In 2002 the Israel Prize in Jewish Law was given to Prof. Nahum Rakover.  This was newsworthy because Rakover had been the victim of the McCarthyist assault against freedom of speech launched by the Israeli Labor Party and the rest of the Left in the 1990s.  It is also noteworthy because in recent years the Israel Prize has so often been granted to radical anti-Israel leftists.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But the radical Left&#8217;s selective devotion to freedom of speech, where everyone has the right to agree with the radical Left but no one has the right to disagree with it, continues to run amok.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Israeli Prof. Denied Honorary Degree for Being too &#8216;Right-Wing&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/israeli-prof-denied-honorary-degree-for-being-too-right-wing/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israeli-prof-denied-honorary-degree-for-being-too-right-wing</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Jan 2014 05:10:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[denied]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Honorary Degree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israeli prof]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prof. Robert Aumann]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=216909</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ardent Zionist and Nobel Prize winner learns leftist free speech hypocrisy firsthand. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/rob.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-217016" alt="rob" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/rob.jpg" width="238" height="185" /></a>Dimitry Shumsky is a young anti-Israel far Leftist whose diatribes litter the far Leftist fringe media in Israel, especially the leftist daily Haaretz.  Since 2009, according to his own published resume, he has held a tenure-track appointment at the Department of the History of the Jewish People at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Shumsky in Haaretz on January 20, 2014 joins the cat fight of the far Left in Israel over the decision by the University of Haifa to veto an honorary PhD to Prof. Robert Aumann.</p>
<p>The Nobel-Prize winning economist Aumann was denied an honorary PhD by the University of Haifa on grounds that he holds conservative political opinions.  It was a great victory for the campaign of the Far Left in Israel against freedom of thought and freedom of speech.  Prof. Ariel Rubinstein, a distinguished economist in Israel, denounced the decision and denounced speakers at a conference at Tel Aviv University who defended the operation of a thought police in the Aumann affair.</p>
<p>Rubinstein is himself quite far off to the Left.  However his Op-Ed in Haaretz a couple of weeks back criticizing those who insist on a political thought police in Israeli academia triggered indignation in the caverns of the Ultra-Left.  Among those chiming in was Tel Aviv University Professor Rivka Feldhay.  You may recall Feldhay as the Tel Aviv University leftist that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted  <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/TAU%20-%20Rivka%20Feldhay%20-%20Held%20Responsible%20for%20Extremist%20Views.htm">NOT be invited to participate</a> in a state reception in Germany.  The reason is that Feldhay had signed petitions demanding that Israeli soldiers engage in mutiny and insurrection to force the government to accept diktats from the Left about the &#8220;occupation.&#8221; After decades of the Left insisting that everyone should have the &#8220;right&#8221; to boycott anyone, including settlements, Israeli universities, and all of Israel, the same Left suddenly was aghast that Netanyahu had decided to &#8220;boycott&#8221; Feldhay.  (Actually he did not boycott her, he just chose not to invite her.)  Feldhay responded with shrill hysteria in a number of Op-Ed articles.</p>
<p>Well the same Feldhay led the purge against poor Prof. Rubinstein for his incorrect thinking.  She pronounced him a &#8220;radical right-winger&#8221; &#8212; this entirely on the grounds that he teaches economics and so understands why communism does not work.   She was followed by other leftist sheep bleating their agreement with her.</p>
<p>Finally Shumsky chimes in his own two cents <a href="http://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/.premium-1.2221194">in Haaretz</a>.  His is an intriguing argument.  According to Shumsky (no relation to Chomsky), people like Ariel Rubinstein are part of the mechanism of &#8220;occupation oppression&#8221; when they criticize the &#8220;occupation.&#8221;   Really!   He writes there: &#8220;One of the most efficient ways to perpetuate the occupation and in so doing endanger the existence of Israel and Zionism altogether is to convert internal Israeli opposition to the occupation into an integral part of the occupation itself.&#8221; Huh?</p>
<p>His evidence is that Rubinstein opposes the operation of Ariel University in the West Bank but also supports the freedom of speech for Prof. Aumann.   As you can see, Shumsky&#8217;s contorted argument is reminiscent of the &#8220;pinkwashing&#8221; charges against Israel, which hold that tolerance towards homosexuals in Israel is all part of a Zionist conspiracy to oppress &#8220;Palestinians.&#8221; The logic of Shumsky&#8217;s piece exceeds anything since that notorious MA thesis at the Hebrew University supervised by Eyal Ben-Ari (yes, the <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/professors-accused-of-sexual-harassment-led-reign-of-terror-says-colleague-1.250938">convicted sexual predator professor</a>), which found that the fact that Israeli troops never rape Arab women is proof that the Jews are so racist. Shumsky, by the way, has a long track record of supporting the bi-national Rwanda-style &#8220;one state solution,&#8221; in which Israel will cease to exist altogether. His presence on the faculty of the Hebrew University is quite instructive about the academic standards in effect there.</p>
<p>In a related matter, you may recall the heroic struggle of Yisrael Shiran.  He was a high school teacher in Israel fired by <a href="http://new.bostonreview.net/BR21.3/Tamir.html">Labor Party Minister of Education Yuli Tamir</a> from his teaching job because he wrote a letter requesting that the political ideas of Yitzhak Rabin not be taught as unchallenged dogma in the schools.  Rabin&#8217;s ideas are controversial, especially regarding Oslo, and opposition to those ideas was just as legitimate as endorsement of them.  Tamir would hear nothing of that.  In her bolshevik response, she had Shiran fired.  McCarthyist censorship by the Left at its best!  Shriran later sued the Ministry of Education for his being fired <a href="http://zioncon.blogspot.co.il/2013/10/one-of-most-important-legal-victories.html">and was awarded</a> 400,000 NIS in damages.</p>
<p>I mention this because it sheds light on the newest cause célèbre of the Far Left in Israel.  Led by Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew, which has devoted much of its pages to the story in recent days, the Far Left is suddenly all upset about the &#8220;suppression of the free speech rights&#8221; of a high school teacher in Tivon, near Haifa.  It seems that Adam Verete made a habit of using his bully pulpit in his classroom at the high school to attempt to indoctrinate his students into his far-leftist anti-Israel ideology.  A female student in his class filed a formal complaint, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.569422">his case is under investigation by the authorities</a>, and there are rumors of threats that he be fired.</p>
<p>Haaretz and its satellites have been having a field day. &#8220;Suppression!&#8221; they scream.  &#8220;Fascism!&#8221; Hmmm.</p>
<p>Let us first note that any threats or investigations regarding Verete are because he was misusing the classroom to indoctrinate and preach ideology, not because he was preaching LEFTIST ideology.  He would have been just as out of line if he were misusing his position in the classroom to preach any other ideology.  Educators are not supposed to use the classroom for ideological indoctrination.  The difference of course is that, if he had been fired for preaching, say, Kahanist ideology, Haaretz would be the first on the block to cheer and congratulate the authorities for the firing.</p>
<p>Haaretz only has a problem when far-leftists are prevented from converting their classrooms into indoctrination camps. When <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/tel-aviv-high-school-principal-facing-dismissal-for-writing-leftist-op-ed-in-haaretz.premium-1.492775">Ram Cohen</a>, a high school principle in Tel Aviv, was practicing on-the-job indoctrination in communism and endorsement of the communist party, Haaretz defended him. When the Council on Higher Education <a href="http://www.pacbi.com/cms/documents.php?pid=4&amp;id=140">attempted to shut down</a> the Department of Politics at Ben Gurion University on grounds that it was <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/BGU%20-%20Zeev%20Maoz%20endorses%20call%20to%20close%20Sci%20Pol%20Dept.htm">a totalitarian substandard center</a> for anti-Israel propaganda and indoctrination, Haaretz was <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Steve%20Plaut%20-%20BGU%20-%20Assault%20on%20Academic%20Freedom%20by%20Totalitarian%20Left.htm">out front defending</a> the department.  So was Rivka Feldhay.  Not a single tenured leftist in Israel has spoken out against SLAPP suit harassments by leftists in Israel to suppress the freedom of speech of critics of leftists.</p>
<p>But guess which educator Haaretz and the leftist herd never uttered a single word to defend.  You are correct; the answer is Yisrael Shiran.  Not only Haaretz maintained a studied silence.  When I posted a challenge on the &#8220;Israel Social Science&#8221; chat list of academics, calling on Israeli law professors to speak out in defense of Shiran and to condemn his firing, not a single one did.  The position by the Radical Left supporting the decision by Haifa University to make Prof. Aumann a political pariah is no less instructive.</p>
<p>The radical Left in Israel, including the tenured fifth column, continues to promote the idea that freedom of speech should be restricted to those who agree with the radical Left. And them alone.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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