THEATER
OF THE ABSURD: THE CONSEQUENCES OF NOT
BEING HITLER
[Note: For the past 3 months, based upon the concocted pretext
that Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon had "offended" the Arab masses by
visiting the public plaza atop
--------------------------------------------------------
Arafat drove through
By: ETGAR LEFKOVITS, Jerusalem Post correspondent, 29 December 2000
--------------------------------------------------------
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat travelled through the streets
of
Due to the stormy weather in
His motorcade passed by the walls of the
A
"If Arafat needs to cross the city of
"As the leader of the Palestinians, we have to treat Arafat with the appropriate dignity on the personal level. This does not mean, however, that we have to give him everything he does not deserve on the political level...Anyway by seeing the city, he knew we are here," Olmert said.
(c) 2000 The
AND
Ha'aretz:
By: Yossi Verter and Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz correspondents, 31 December 2000
Likud chair MK Ariel Sharon sent a greeting card to Palestinian Authority
Chairman Yasser Arafat over the weekend in honor of the Id al-Fitr holiday.
Along with the greeting for a happy holiday to "Arafat and his
family," the note also expressed hope that the holiday would bring with it
full peace for
In response, MK Eli Goldshmidt, who heads [Prime Minister] Ehud Barak's campaign headquarters said, "The masquerade orchestrated by Likud's campaign spin doctors continues."
© Copyright 2000 Haaretz. All rights reserved
Commentary: Kever Yosef (Joseph's Tomb), together with its
synagogue, is destroyed in Shechem (
And, in deference to the honor and respect that the gentile nations shower
upon Yasser Arafat, y'mach sh'mo (cursed be his name),
"As the leader of the Palestinians, we have to treat Arafat with the appropriate dignity on the personal level." What can one say about the immorality of Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert who applauds and justifies the monster's escort under Jewish protection when, instead, he should have demanded the monster's arrest and execution for crimes against the Jewish people?
"Anyway by seeing the city, he knew we are here." No, Mr. Mayor!
By being able to continually murder and maim Jews with impunity, the monster
knows that we are here; once he runs out of Jews to annihilate, then he
will know that we are no longer here.
And then there is Likud party leader and prime ministerial candidate Ariel Sharon who sends a greeting card to the very same monster! Is this really the "ariel" (lion of God) who seeks to be the ruler over the Jewish nation or, rather, just another frightened Jew who places Yirat HaGoyim above Yirat Elohim? In an effort to ingratiate himself with the gentile nations which have already begun to preemptively demonize him prior to the Israeli elections -- and to thereby "prove" to them that he is, in fact, quite "civilized", and that they are, in fact, quite wrong about him -- Ariel Sharon now supinely demonstrates for them how, despite the hemorrhaging of the Jewish people, he is, nonetheless, able to return Kindness for Cruelty.
Is there any moral basis for a Jewish leader to wish well the enemy leader
who, on a daily basis, orchestrates the murder and maiming of the very
people whom that Jewish leader is sworn to protect? Let us suppose that during
the Shoah (Holocaust), Adolf Hitler, y'mach sh'mo -- in order to weaken the
resolve of the Allies -- entered into peace negotiations while the furnaces of
Indeed, the case of Hitler, y’mach sh’mo, is the exception that proves the rule; for, past and present Jewish leaders have habitually committed the great sin of respecting the dignity of those who comprise the leadership of our enemies.
For example, Saul, first king of united
Similarly, Ahab, y’mach sh’mo, a subsequent monarch of the northern kingdom
of Israel, who was himself an exceedingly evil person, was ordered by God to
crush the evil empire of Aram, which had invaded Samaria in order to loot the
country and carry off its women and children into slavery. Although, in two great battles, the Aramean
and allied armies were decimated, Ben-hadad, y’mach sh’mo, the Aramean king,
escaped to the City of
Furthermore, it should be recalled that Haman, y'mach sh'mo -- the villain of the Purim story and a descendant of King Agag, y'mach, sh'mo -- is expressly described by Scripture as " ... Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews." (Esther 3:10); and later as: " ... Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews." (Esther 9:24). For his crimes against the Jewish people he was summarily executed (see Esther 7:1-10); and he is, consequently, deemed to be the archetypal adversary of the Jewish people. Yet he earned the death penalty and the everlasting enmity of the Jewish people without ever having harmed a single Jew. His punishment and infamy were due solely to his unfulfilled intentions. In this respect, Arafat, y'mach sh'mo, is much worse than Haman, y'mach sh'mo, because Arafat, y'mach sh'mo, has been able to commence fulfilling his intentions.
Moreover, it is perverse that that our Jewish leadership continues to rage -- through innumerable Holocaust memorials and endless Holocaust research projects -- against the Nazi enemy which has not harmed a single Jew in more than half a century, but that it is unable to redirect even a fraction of that rage against the Arab enemy which is presently directing a war of annihilation against the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.
May God provide us with a leader who has Yirat Elohim and not Yirat HaGoyim. And may God provide us with a leader who understands when the exhibition and application of kindness and mercy constitute a Kiddush HaShem (sanctification of God's Name) and when such exhibition and application, instead, constitute a Chillul HaShem (desecration of God's Name). And may God provide us with this leader quickly!
© Mark Rosenblit
* Why do I say "bloods" and not "blood"? -- this is because, by murdering even one person, the monster exterminates, as well, all of the martyred one's unconceived descendants (see Gen. 4:10: "Then He said, 'What have you done? The voice of your brother's bloods [in Hebrew: d’mai achicha] cries out to Me from the ground!'"; see also Mishna, Sanhedrin 4:5, concerning the murder of Abel by Cain: “... it does not say, ‘your brother’s blood’ but ‘your brother’s bloods’, [indicating] his blood and the blood of his succeeding generations.”).
Note:
Arise, Shimon Peres, knight commander?
By HERB KEINON and JONNY PAUL
(Jerusalem Post, October 24, 2008) Efforts to have President Shimon Peres
"knighted" during a visit to
Yediot Aharonot, under a headline "Sir Peres," reported Wednesday
that Peres was expected to be appointed an honorary knight by Queen Elizabeth
II in appreciation of his contribution to peace efforts in the
While admitting that the embassy in
What is at issue is an appointment for Peres as an honorary member to the Order
of
Foreigners may be admitted as honorary members, but they cannot prefix
"Sir" to their first names. They can, however, place the initials of
the order after their last name. In Peres's case, therefore, he would become
President Shimon Peres, KCMG, for Knight Commander of St. Michael and St.
George.
[Microsoft Corporation founder] Bill Gates and [former New York City Mayor]
Rudolph Giuliani are among foreigners with honorary knighthoods.
The honorary appointment of Peres to this order is still under discussion
between
Peres will be making a three-day visit to the
(©) The
Note: Although Egypt tirelessly demonizes Israel in its state-controlled media, in United Nations forums, and in the Arab and Muslim organizations of which it is a member (such as the League of Arab States and the Organization of the Islamic Conference) and then turns a blind eye to the hundreds of tunnels originating in Sinai which are used by Hamas to smuggle explosives and weaponry into Gaza, Israel habitually responds to Egypt’s systematic aggression by showering it with flattery. Read on! -- Mark Rosenblit
Lieberman: Mubarak can go to Hell
By Jerusalem Post staff
(Jerusalem Post, October 30, 2008) Both President Shimon Peres and Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert acted swiftly Wednesday to try and contain any diplomatic
damage from Israel Beiteinu head Avigdor Lieberman's unflattering remarks about
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, phoning Mubarak to say Lieberman's words did
not reflect Israeli policy.
Speaking at a Knesset memorial session Wednesday marking the seventh
anniversary of former tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi's assassination,
Lieberman said, "[Ze'evi] would never agree to the self-effacing attitude
of Israel vis-a-vis Egypt. Time after time, our leaders go to meet Mubarak in
Olmert, according to his office, called Mubarak immediately afterward and
apologized for the "crude" comments. The prime minister told Mubarak
that it would have been better had comments like those not been made, and that
once they were uttered it was clear they were "unnecessary and
harmful."
According to Olmert's office, the prime minister said
Peres also phoned Mubarak and issued a statement expressing "sorrow"
at Lieberman's statement.
"The State of Israel has deep respect for President Mubarak and his
country for their important and leading role in furthering peace in the
region," Peres said, adding that one "lone call" would not harm
relations that were wide, varied and full of content.
The quick and unequivocal response by Peres and Olmert indicated concern in
Nevertheless, Mubarak's refusal to make a state visit to
Mubarak is expected to host a meeting of the Quartet -- the
In preparation for that meeting, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is
expected to arrive in
Another indication that the
(©) The
Note: While Hamas-controlled
Fischer defends
Dec. 12, 2008
Sharon Wrobel, THE
The government's decision to transfer NIS 100 million in cash to Gaza Strip banks was justified, Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer said Thursday.
"It is the Bank of
Amid harsh criticism from Knesset members and dozens of family members of
victims of terrorist rocket attacks, an armored truck carrying
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday approved the cash transfer from
Palestinian banks in the West Bank to
In recent months, disagreements have emerged between the Bank of Israel and
Bank Hapoalim and Israel Discount Bank over the provision of banking services
to
The Bank of Israel cannot force Israeli banks to do business with
The central bank recently asked Hapoalim and Discount to delay cutting off ties with Gaza banks and continue activity, at least until the end of January [2009].
Copyright 1995 - 2008 The
Note: Israel’s elected government habitually permits its collective authority to be undermined by errant ceremonial officials, rogue Cabinet Ministers, ambitious Members of Knesset and politically-influential private individuals and to thereby be disregarded by colluding foreign governments. Read on! -- Mark Rosenblit
Another Tack: Where fools have been before
By SARAH HONIG
(Jerusalem Post, May 22, 2014) All too many Israeli politicians brazenly seek to star in compulsive remakes of Shimon Peres’s original London and Oslo escapades.
The Israeli penchant for dismissing official authority and embarking on freelance diplomatic endeavors could presumably be dismissed as an almost endearing eccentricity. The problem is that it’s anything but endearing. It triggers real disasters.
The hubris to flout the authority of any government – no matter who heads it – exclusively emboldens left-wing players. They range from relatively unknown individuals (though they’re always well-connected to the real clout-bearers) all the way to top-ranking ministers who, fired up by their own chutzpah, set out to hijack history-making prerogatives.
Soon-to-retire President Shimon Peres still does it in his ostensibly ceremonial role of president. But he already behaved badly as foreign minister to both prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.
The latest to dabble in unauthorized diplomacy is Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. She recently conferred with Ramallah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas in London, despite the government’s decision (which she supported) to freeze contact with him for his kiss-and-make-up with Jihadist Hamas.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was reported to be displeased with this rendezvous (by way of significant understatement).
It cannot be easy for him (again, by way of significant understatement). His hold on the reins of Israeli diplomacy is continuously challenged by cliques of conceited self-appointed competitors. Livni’s controversial initiative came only days after Peres informed the nation straight-faced that he had single-handed all but achieved a comprehensive peace agreement (no less) with Abbas in 2011 and that said salvation from all of our existential woes was summarily scuttled by none other than Netanyahu.
More precisely, Peres claimed that Netanyahu asked him to wait “three or four days,” then “the days went by,” and the deal disappeared with them. Of course, one would assume that had there been any substance to whatever it was that Peres claims to have cleverly concocted – and had it been bolstered by any authentic Palestinian commitment – it would have survived for a few additional days.
However, Peres’s aim isn’t to make peace or to make a sense. It is, as per many a precedent on his part, to impart innuendo and garner glory for himself.
Both of these should be fundamental no-noes for anyone who accepts that it is the right of an elected government to determine its own diplomatic strategy. It’s one thing for the opposition or for overly ambitious coalition members to carp and take potshots domestically but quite another to launch their own foreign policy projects. So, anyway, it ought to be wherever the basics of the voters’ democratic verdict are minimally respected.
Back in 1947, in what was dubbed “the speech heard around the world,” Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg urged that Democratic President Harry Truman be allowed to pursue his foreign policy unhindered because “politics should stop at the water’s edge.” In other words, honorable politicians present a united front to other countries and to external entities, regardless of home-turf disagreements. *Conducting a separate foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis inimical forces, is illegitimate in any democracy. The proactive sabotage of an elected government’s policy overturns electoral results by means other than the ballot box.
Wherever and whenever foreign policy doesn’t remain free of tinkering inspired by partisan rivalries and aspirations, the consequences may prove calamitous. Remember: the entire Oslo fiasco began as private diplomatic enterprise behind the back of Israel’s elected government.
The prelude occurred in 1987, when Shimon Peres, then serving as Shamir’s foreign minister, cooked up the London Agreement with Jordan. Peres kept Shamir in the dark, while leading King Hussein to believe Peres had Shamir’s blessing. Only the Americans eventually let Shamir in on the scheme. Peres even refused to show Shamir a copy of the agreement, something the Americans in due course provided for Israel’s head of government.
Shamir sacked Peres. Rabin didn’t, although Peres pulled the same stunt on him. Instead, Rabin fell for the fait accompli, which came to be known as the Oslo Accord.
In an Oct.31, 2008 Yediot Aharonot interview, Yossi Beilin unabashedly admitted that during the Oslo process, he “had to do things behind peoples’ backs. I was deputy foreign minister. The foreign minister and prime minister [Peres and Rabin respectively] didn’t know that I was conducting talks with the PLO until I decided to inform them.”
It all began in November 1992, when Beilin’s buddies, Ya’ir Hirschfeld and the late Ron Pundak hobnobbed with Hanan Ashrawi, spokeswoman for the PLO delegation to the moribund Madrid Conference. Hirschfeld and Pundak disapproved on the way both the Shamir and Rabin governments handled the talks and undertook unilaterally to overrule them – as they saw fit.
They began holding stealthy get-togethers with a host of PLO hotshots, despite this being explicitly illegal under Israeli law at the time. But laws were obviously intended for other people, not for those considered too exalted in their own eyes to abide by what binds ordinary mortals.
Ashrawi introduced them to Ahmed Qurei (Abu-Ala) one of the more senior PLO honchos. Soon pseudo-negotiations ensued despite Hirschfeld’s and Pundak’s lack of standing. After Beilin was briefed, he prevailed on Peres, whose fondness for going behind any government’s back was already well-established by then. This was after Rabin had already publicly scorned Peres for being “a relentless underminer.”
But crucially, when push really came to shove, the irresolute Rabin failed to stand up to Peres’s wiles. Having made a ruinous bet, he kept throwing more good money after the bad. Essentially Oslo came to be because Beilin successfully pitched the notion that the Palestinians had undergone a strategic metamorphosis to his boss Shimon Peres, who proceeded to bamboozle his own boss, Rabin.
Then, with fantastic fanfare and self-congratulation, the furtive deal was unveiled to the citizenry as a glorious masterstroke. The intelligence community didn’t raise a ruckus, the intellectual elites celebrated and the obstinate opponents were lumped with Hamas as “enemies of peace.”
Beilin’s 2008 confession should have generated a furious political maelstrom. Our opinion-molders should have been scandalized. Our entire public discourse should have reverberated with outrage. But nobody was appalled. Perhaps it was because Beilin’s conspiracy was right up Peres’s alley and he enticed Rabin into it.
Ultimately, irresponsible dilettante negotiations without government sanction or foreknowledge do more than undercut Israel’s strength. They cause disregard and derision for us internationally. Jewish sovereignty ends up treated with impertinence nobody would ever dare demonstrate even toward any minor third-world potentate. What foreign governments and their local envoys allow themselves here, they wouldn’t begin to countenance in relation to any other government anywhere, even of the less-than-strictly-democratic variety.
The erosion is continuous and the damage is wrought in increments, over so many years, until collective memory of most individual episodes of subterfuge quickly fades.
Here is one seemingly negligible yet very telling instance from January 2004, when astonished members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee were informed that Norway’s embassy hosted a clandestine meeting between then-opposition leader Shimon Peres of Labor and then-Palestinian premier Ahmed Qurei (yes, the very one who back in 1992 got the ball truly rolling with Hirschfeld and Pundak). In 2004, Qurei assiduously resisted all pressure to meet with Israel’s elected premier, Ariel Sharon.
But that was hardly all. Qurei was chauffeured to Tel Aviv, without prior coordination with IDF authorities, by non-other than Norwegian UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen – one of Oslo’s progenitors, with political and personal links aplenty to Peres. Larsen had transported Qurei illicitly across the lines in blatant contravention of the legitimate authorities’ regulations. Larsen thereby thumbed his nose at Israeli self-determination and this was no isolated instance of such contempt by him.
The fact that the Norwegian embassy thought it desirable to go behind its host government’s back attested to a flagrantly disrespectful attitude and inappropriate conduct, hardly conceivable elsewhere.
In this forgotten but seminal case, senior diplomats sought to further agendas in cahoots with Israel’s opposition against the expressed policies of the legal government. In blunter terms this should have been called subversion.
Even in 2004, moreover, it wasn’t an isolated instance. It came hot on the heels of the bizarre financial largesse and tireless efforts of the Swiss to sponsor the Geneva Accords, in impudent defiance of the government which represented the overwhelming majority of Israelis.
Worse yet, this wasn’t solely the oddball undemocratic indecency of misguided Europeans. Then-American ambassador Dan Kurtzer, representing what was hyped as Washington’s friendliest-ever administration, engaged in similar hanky-panky.
He hosted a get-together between senior Palestinians – though they boycotted Israel’s elected leadership – and leading activists in Israel’s leftwing opposition from both Labor and Meretz.
Particularly disconcerting was the fact that at least some of this session was devoted to trashing Israel’s duly elected government. If anything, that signaled to potential Palestinian “peace-partners” that they needn’t respect their Israeli interlocutors and that they can take it for granted that Israel doesn’t enjoy American backing. In itself, that constituted a treacherous message.
Intensifying the insolence was the fact that the surreptitious nature of assignation diplomacy wasn’t what then bothered Labor or Meretz. They were up-in-arms about the fact that officialdom was aware of whom they saw and what was said. They vociferously protested what they asserted smacked of McCarthyism.
Magically, they shifted focus from their underhandedness to the supposed violation of their rights, just as they do in recurrent imbroglios about who funds the Left’s front-organizations, those which spare no effort or tactic to demonize Israel worldwide.
All too many Israeli politicians brazenly seek to star in compulsive remakes of Peres’s original London and Oslo escapades. Indeed, once Peres – his advancing years notwithstanding – is freed of the presidency’s most nominal obligations and restrictions, we can expect his ultra-invigorated attempts to reprise his antics of old.
Such folly is inherently dangerous, because the Pereses, Beilins, Livnis and their numerous think-alike cronies/groupies dominate the media, dictate the national agenda and may inspire/impel a future government as they did the one that gave us Oslo.
Their unconscionable recklessness casts a lingering portentous pall over us. Someone once wisely observed that fools rush in where fools have been before.
All rights reserved © 1995 - 2014 The Jerusalem Post.
Note: Even while Gazan missiles and mortars are again raining down upon Israel, the Jewish State continues to supply, inter alia, de facto free electricity to Gaza -- power which Gaza uses to conduct its war of genocide against the Jewish people. Ironically, although a Gazan missile has recently destroyed one of the Israeli power cables that supplies electricity to Gaza, it is almost certain that Israel will repair that power cable once there is a pause in Gaza’s missile barrage. All of the foregoing is absurd. Read on! -- Mark Rosenblit
Hamas’s own goal
By JPost Editorial
15/07/2014 [July 15, 2014]
It was almost poetic justice – a rocket that Hamas fired at Israel on Sunday night knocked out a high-voltage line that supplies electricity to some 70,000 Gazans. This was a blackout waiting to happen.
Literally biting the hand that feeds it, Hamas persistently aims at the very Ashkelon power plant upon which Gaza depends for its electricity. Israel has refrained from switching the power off lest it incur censure from abroad.
Neither Gaza nor the Ramallah half of the Palestinian Authority pays for the power consumed. Gaza alone, it’s estimated, owes the Israel Electric Corporation NIS 220 million (out of the staggering NIS1.5 billion of unpaid Palestinian debts).
The downed electricity line is one of a dozen high-tension lines with 120 megawatts per hour transmission capacity. Its loss means that the entire area between Khan Yunis and Deir el-Balah has been plunged into darkness.
The damage is reparable, but there’s no quick fix. In the best of times this job could take a long time. As things stand, with more rockets flying out of Gaza, no IEC employees would be willing to risk life and limb and expose themselves to Gazan predations just in order to restore electricity to Gazans. Moreover, no one asks them to.
The IEC states that attempts to mend the severed line wouldn’t be made before full calm is restored and workers could assume they were operating in uncompromised safety. This has received unstinting government backing. Indeed, it is reported that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and National Infrastructure Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom had both personally instructed IEC chairman Yiftah Ron-Tal to abstain from endangering the lives of IEC personnel for the Gazans’ sake.
Moreover, Israel’s supplying electricity to Gaza is part of a larger anomaly.
Despite the 2005 disengagement, Israel has not been able to fully disengage from Gaza. Thus while Hamas lobs rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians in nearly every corner of the country, Israel continues to supply the Strip not only with electricity but also water, foodstuffs, medications, and more. This continues during spates of fighting because Israel seeks to deflect PR [public relations] damage and legal travail.
The IEC has gone so far as to petition the High Court of Justice last month either to allow it to disobey government directives to continue supplying electricity to Gaza or to order the government to deduct the sums owed the IEC from tax money collected by Israel for the PA.
The alternative would be to pass on the costs to ordinary Israelis who are already burdened with inordinately high bills. The upshot would be that Israeli households would end up paying for the electricity which Gazans inter alia use to manufacture the rockets with which they threaten the lives of the very same Israelis who pick up their tab. The current is likewise used to dig and maintain tunnels through which much of Hamas’s deadly arsenal is smuggled and through which incursions against Israelis are also plotted.
Surely the disingenuous humanist outcry anticipated in case of a power cut from the Israeli side cannot arise when Gazans cause their own comeuppance. It would be too much even for biased foreign opinion molders and political pontificators to expect Israeli technicians to put their lives on the line for the sake of their would-be killers. It shouldn’t be too much to presume that there’s a limit to how unreasonable the international community can be.
But the just deserts which Hamas rocket launchers brought on their own people should also light the way for future Israeli policy. If Israel is loath to outright pull the plug on the electricity it supplies Gaza, it can at least a priori publish a price list for Gazan infractions of whatever future accommodation is reached. Whenever any projectile is fired from Gaza after the truce, it should automatically mean a blackout for given periods, depending on the severity of the aggression. Thus both Gaza and world opinion would be apprised in advance of the consequences of any attacks from Gaza.
Those who wish to keep Gaza supplied should encourage it to cease firing.
All rights reserved © 1995 - 2014 The Jerusalem Post.
Note: Now that a temporary cease-fire has been declared, Israel has, indeed, begun to restore power to Gaza. Read on! -- Mark Rosenblit:
[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA, 6 August 2014: In reply to a question from IMRA, IEC Deputy Spokesperson Iris Ben-Shahal replied that the total debt of the Palestinians to Israel Electric is today NIS 1.5 billion (close to USD 440 million)]
Israel Electric Corp. Begins Repairing Power Grids for Gaza Residents
Last night, Tuesday (5 August 2014), Israel Electric Corporation employees of the Be'er Sheva district, as instructed by the political echelon and authorized by the IDF, began working (near the border with the Gaza Strip) to repair the power grids that were damaged due to rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.
Repairing the lines that deliver electricity to Gaza requires very meticulous and complex work, under difficult working conditions. IDF soldiers are guarding the IEC employees with tanks and APCs.
IEC provides 120 megawatts of electricity to Gaza on 10 high voltage lines. Most of the power lines were damaged due to rocket fire.
IEC will continue to work on repairing the damaged lines on the Israeli side. There are also a number of damaged power lines within the Gaza Strip.
All IEC work is in full coordination with the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).
For further details, please contact IEC Deputy Spokesperson Iris Ben-Shahal at <mailto:iris.ben-shahal@iec.co.il>, 076-8642046 or 052-3997683.
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Another tack: Goebbels on the BBC
By SARAH HONIG
No sane Briton would have tolerated the notion of the BBC broadcasting German propaganda to Londoners as they ran for shelter from German bombs.
(Jerusalem Post, July 31, 2014) Imagine Josef Goebbels invited to speak his mind on the BBC, smack dab during the Battle of Britain and the blitz. Sound absurd? Sure, but only in the context of normal nations. No sane Briton would have tolerated the notion of the BBC broadcasting German propaganda to Londoners as they ran for shelter from German bombs.
Abetting Nazi belligerence would have been a nonstarter even under the guise of a detached reporter’s interview, part of an evenhanded approach, a sporting consideration for the aggressor’s point of view.
But not so in Israel. Here we operate in an alternative universe. Nothing that would be unthinkable anywhere else is out of bounds for our broadcasters.
As Protective Edge [which is Israel’s latest military operation to stop Gazan rockets and mortars] raged, they kept us tuned to nonstop nattering, most of it superfluous, speculative and narcissist. But in many prattle panels, there was an Arab-Israeli MK or a hotshot from some Arab “anti-racism” group (since in this country only Jews are accused of racism and never Arabs, the term is used as a loaded euphemism for anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist and/or anti-Israel).
The rules of our deranged game oblige media hosts to treat Goebbels’s latter-day torchbearers with courteous deference, or – put less diplomatically – with obsequiousness.
These hostile guests all do their absolute darndest to get our goat and compete fiercely with one another for the title of most abusive and abrasive. That distinction is worth political gold in Israel’s ominously radicalized Arab sector where it becomes a prime vote-getting asset.
In this round, though, [Arab] MK Ahmed Tibi (Ta’al) must be judged as a formidable contender for top prize, much as his ambitious competitors tried to outdo him. He railed and he rebuked. He vituperated and he vilified. He shouted down everyone else and shrieked till his eyes bulged and stared daggers. If looks could kill, Tibi’s viewers would all be promptly dispatched to the netherworld.
The Tibi horror show included hardly veiled allusions to the Holocaust, in which he made full use of our Jewish idiom. He’s well aware that on each Holocaust Remembrance Day we recite long roll calls of exterminated Jews, under the heading of “Each one had a name.”
Mockingly mimicking our commemoration, Tibi thundered: “You know the names of the children and men and women you slaughtered in Gaza. They each had a name!” He thereafter proceeded to holler them out in a confrontational and stentorian provocation.
Tibi’s chutzpah is so colossal that it’s hard to know where to begin taking him on. We could remind him of the avid enthusiasm of his parents’ generation both locally and throughout the Arab world for Hitler’s industrialized execution of Jews.
The spiritual forefather of both Fatah and Hamas was Haj Amin al-Husseini who spent the war years in Berlin as Hitler’s guest, recruited Muslims to some of the most heinous of SS units, called for the shedding of Jewish blood “to please Allah,” foiled every plan to rescue Jewish children and sealed the fate of Hungarian Jewry even as WWII ebbed. Despite having been declared a wanted war criminal, Husseini remains exceedingly popular among Tibi’s cheerleaders.
Then we arrive at Tibi’s implied analogy. Did European Jews lob rockets at German civilians going about their daily lives? Did they abduct and murder German schoolchildren? Did they dig tunnels from which to perpetrate mega-massacres in German villages? And did the Jews doomed to unspeakable deaths – for no other rationale than their lineage – use noncombatants as human shields to protect fanatical rocketers and their installations? Did the ill-fated Jews hoard vast military arsenals? Did they endanger 70 percent of all Germans? Tibi can be accused of a whole lot but he cannot be called stupid. He knows full well he’s lying big (as per Goebbels’s instruction) and he scornfully resorts to the most spiteful of lies.
What can we do about it? Not much. Our ultra-liberal Supreme Court will defend Tibi’s right to defame us to the last drop of our Jewish blood. Tibi will continue messing with our minds from the podium of the Jewish state’s parliament and he’ll rouse his electorate’s fervor with ever-more inflammatory rhetoric.
Ours is decidedly a suicidal democracy and its aberrations are unlikely to be eradicated. That said, why invite Tibi to our radio and TV studios? Why give his sedition resonance? Why aggrandize his unconcealed antagonism? Why play into his hands? The simplest thing would be not to request his subversive participation in endless on-air talk-fests. No court can oblige any anchor or producer to relay Tibi’s rants.
Tibi and his ilk would have us believe that the entire conflict with Gaza began with callous Israeli bombardments aimed intentionally at frightened tots. No mention is made of the thousands of rockets rained down on Israelis before Israel lifted a finger in its defense.
No mention is made of how long Israel waited to react and how we repeatedly accepted cease-fires that Hamastan disdainfully rebuffed. Tibi doesn’t concede that the rockets from Gaza aren’t launched for benevolent ends but are meant to sow death and destruction.
He cynically dismisses our acute distress as resentment against “barbaric Palestinians for preventing saddened Jewish kids from going to dance class.” However, only the technology ingenious Israelis developed – after years of Gazan shelling – keeps us from bleeding out.
Ironically, the very Iron Dome which deflects harm from us, inter alia allows assorted Tibi to misrepresent this as a one-sided war, one in which only hapless Arabs are walloped. The travesty, though, doesn’t end here. The same TV presenters who stomach Tibi’s distortions, shower effusive praise on Amir Peretz, one of the more incompetent defense ministers we’ve had, because during his erstwhile stint he agreed not to nix the anti-rocket system.
Nobody stops to ask why our lives must now so crucially depend on this super-defensive cutting-edge contraption, awe-inspiring as it most truly is.
It’s politically expedient for Israel’s Left (and most of our news-purveyors lean leftward) to obscure the fact that were it not for the 2005 disengagement, the Iron Dome wouldn’t have been indispensable. As long as we maintained military control of the Gaza Strip, no rockets reached Ashkelon, Ashdod, Rishon, Tel Aviv, the Sharon region and all the way up north to Haifa and even beyond. This nightmare is indisputably disengagement’s byproduct.
Each territory we relinquish becomes a terror base. So it still is in south Lebanon and so it was in Judea and Samaria until we reasserted control in Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. Our ongoing presence there is the only reason that Ben-Gurion Airport isn’t permanently closed, that rockets from Kalkilya don’t flatten Kfar Saba and that Tulkarm doesn’t demolish Netanya.
OUR SURVIVAL depends on not surrendering territory. Making nice to still-viable foes won’t safeguard us from their predations.
Are there any rueful reevaluations on the Left – any breast-beating? Of course not. Disengagement’s promoters prefer we not recall their arrogant sales pitches.
On October 25, 2004, as he urged the Knesset to approve the reckless retreat from Gaza, then-PM Ariel Sharon assured the nation that “this disengagement will strengthen Israel’s hold on the territory essential to our existence and will win the blessing and gratitude of those near and far, will lessen enmity, will break besiegement and boycotts and will further us on the path of peace with the Palestinians and with all our other neighbors.”
In the same vein, Sharon’s deputy Ehud Olmert energetically peddled the dodgy merchandise: “Disengagement will bring better defense, greater security, significantly more prosperity and much joy to all who live in the Mideast... Together we will move forward in the direction of forging new relationships, improved mutual understanding and enhanced trust. We will sit with our neighbors, talk to them, help them, cooperate with them, become their partners, so that the Middle East will indeed transform into what it was supposed to be to begin with – the Garden of Eden upon this earth.”
As the shattered shards of these sham inducements tumbled menacingly all around the Garden of Eden, not only weren’t Olmert and his sidekick Tzipi Livni the least bit contrite, but both vigorously concocted a disengagement sequel, which they dubbed “Realignment.” It was to bring the dubious bounties of Gaza’s disengagement to the elongated eastern flank of our densest population concentrations.
This is what we must be forever wary of. Flare-ups and ensuing military operations come and go but our collective memories soon fade away, overtaken by the inexorable march of fresh news superimposed on yesterday’s banner headlines. Once the current fighting in Gaza recedes into the past, new schemes will be spawned for more giveaways of strategic holdings.
To this day our political arena bristles with know-it-alls who adamantly refuse to connect cause and effect, who deny the direct link between the evacuation of Gush Katif (along with the three north Gaza buffer settlements) and the emergence of Hamastan – armed to the teeth with all manner of flying projectiles, capable not only of imperiling the Negev but of harassing most of Israel.
It wasn’t coincidence that propelled an emboldened Hamas to power hot on the heels of our withdrawal and that freed it to fire at will on us from the very Jewish settlements we razed. It was Israel that granted Hamas the capacity to decide how and when it might disrupt the lives of Israeli civilians. Gaza’s monstrous gunrunning was plainly facilitated by the IDF’s absence.
By ignoring all this and sustaining the two-state chimera on artificial life support, we erode our own commonsense and undermine our self-preservation prospects. It’s the same folly that impels us to suck up to Tibi and allow Goebbels’s redoubtable disciple into our living rooms. Masochistically we suffer his depictions of IAF pilots as “repugnant murderers.”
It’s as if the Third Reich’s chief propagandist had told BBC listeners that the RAF’s heroic pilots, who dealt Hitler his first major defeat, were homicidal beasts. Bombed and battered Britain never countenanced the notion that it shouldn’t differentiate between its own casualties and those of the enemy who started the war in the first place.
An attacked nation doesn’t worry about the welfare of those who strive to annihilate it. Perceiving ourselves through enemy eyes means losing the psychological war. This is just what Tibi wants.
www.sarahhonig.com Debunking the Bull, Sarah Honig’s book, was recently published by Gefen.
All rights reserved © 1995 - 2014 The Jerusalem Post.
Note: The jurist who will determine the definition of “Zionism” for purposes of Israel’s upcoming Knesset elections is an anti-Zionist Arab who refuses to acknowledge Israel’s national anthem at official ceremonies. It’s absurd. Read on! -- Mark Rosenblit (Thanks to Michael Rosenblit for submitting article)
Court Appeal to Stop Labor-Hatnua Running as 'The Zionist Camp'
Jewish Home candidate Ronen Shoval says 'anti-Zionist' statements by party members make the name 'Zionist Camp' misleading to the public.
By Hezki Ezra, Cynthia Blank
Arutz Sheva, First Publish: 1/22/2015, 12:45 PM
Jewish Home Knesset candidate Ronen Shoval filed a petition Thursday morning to prevent the Labor-Hatnua joint list from running under the name "The Zionist Camp."
The founder and former chairman of Im Tirzu, Shoval made his request to the Chairman of the Central Elections Committee – [anti-Zionist Arab] Judge Salim Joubran.
Shoval submitted the appeal based on "anti-Zionist statements" made by the party's candidates and the existing prohibition on political parties running under names that may mislead the public.
Several more radical members of the new Labor party list have made controversial comments including calls for dodging IDF service, which many see as beyond the pale for a self-declared "Zionist party".
As he submitted the petition Shoval said, "without regard to the legality of the statements, which are themselves problematic and need to be taken care of, deceiving the voters by running under the name 'Zionist' is unacceptable."
"Just as the campaign of Hanin Zoabi running under a list called 'Supporters of the IDF' would be disqualified, so too should a list of Buji [Herzog], Tzipi [Livni], Merav Michaeli, Yossi Yona, Stav Shaffir, etc," he explained.
The petition comes a week after Jewish Home published a series of posters with images of top Labor candidates along with their troublesome quotes.
These include remarks by Labor Chairman Yitzhak Herzog stating that "the term 'Jewish state' is totally wrong."
The posters also feature MK Stav Shaffir's comment that "Hatikva is racist" and MK Merav Michaeli calling "not to send children to the army."
Additionally, Yossi Yona, it was revealed this week, signed a letter ten years ago praising soldiers who refused to serve in Judea and Samaria.
"We must tell the truth to the public and the truth shall prevail. That's the way it goes in democracy, even if it's not always pleasant for the Left," Shoval concluded.
© Arutz Sheva, All Rights Reserved
Note: Although Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, Jordan has been extremely hostile to Israel in international forums, including the United Nations, where it has co-sponsored many resolutions which demonize and delegitimize the Jewish State. Additionally, Jordan tolerates (if not encourages) hatred of Israel and the Jewish people in its government-controlled media, mosque sermons and school curricula. As a result, Jordan is one of the most Antisemitic States in the World. Jordan’s present leader, Abdullah ibn Hussein, is fond of personally condemning and even threatening Israel over actions that the Jewish State has taken or is contemplating taking in order to protect its existential interests (e.g., applying Israel’s de jure sovereignty to the Jordan Valley, which abuts Jordan). However, notwithstanding the foregoing, Israel delights in complimenting hostile Jordan and its hostile leader. Jordan and its leader have never, and will never, return the compliment. Read on! – Mark Rosenblit
Israel congratulates Jordan on the occasion of its centenary
11 Apr 2021
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, under the leadership of King Abdullah II,
is a key player in the region and a key and strategic partner of Israel,
promoting values of peace, moderation and tolerance.
(Communicated by the MFA Spokesperson)
On the occasion of one hundred years since the founding of the Jordanian state, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel on behalf of all the people of Israel, sends congratulations to HM King Abdullah II and the people of Jordan.
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, under the leadership of King Abdullah II, is a key player in the region and a key and strategic partner of Israel, promoting values of peace, moderation and tolerance.
We wish The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan a prosperous future, and will continue to promote our bilateral relations in various fields for the benefit of both our peoples.
[Note: In an act of unrequited flattery, the foregoing MFA statement reiterates Jordan’s false claim that it has been an independent State for 100 years (i.e., since 1921). On the contrary, Jordan has been an independent State only since 1946. From 1921 - 1946, the Hashemite Emirate of Transjordan was a ward of Britain, as Mandatory, under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. – Mark Rosenblit]
Note: Words in brackets [ ] represent my explanatory comments only; and they form no part of the republished article. -- Mark Rosenblit