1. I must admit that I seem to be developing a strange weakness in my later years and that is believing that a tremendous crime or atrocity by the PLO is sufficient to persuade the Israeli public and the Oslo Camp in particular that Oslo is dead, that it was a huge mega-error to begin with, and that the only choice for the country is to tear it up and impose R&D on the Palestinians (Re-Occupation and Denazification). Each time Jews were mass murdered by PLO "activists" or by the Hamas wing of Meretz, amidst the horror I would also breath a sigh of relief, thinking that at least now - at last - the Osloids will come to their senses and the country will return to sanity. After each bus bombing or similar atrocity, I would come into the campus with eyes wide in expectation of all of the signs of an awakening. I would read Haaretz expecting to see outpourings of columns about how wrong we have been all along. I would listen to the banter about me.

   All in vain.

   It goes without saying that nothing of the kind would ever happen. Israeli Leftists would pour out their bleatings in the press, the campus Left would reassert itself. All insisting that the Left had never been as correct as it is now, that the only error was in not going FAR ENOUGH down the Oslo road, that every act of violence and nazism by the PLO proved how devoted the PLO and the Israeli Left are to peace. How if only the settlements would be removed and the "occupation" ended once and for all, the Middle East would turn into a gentle pool of pink lemonade.

   And, alas, I must confess that OOPS I did it again (sorry, my kids have been playing the Britney Spears on the CD player), this week. When Israel a few days back captured the PLO’s Ship of Death, carrying 80 tons of missiles, shells, mortars, and other weapons, I was convinced that THIS TIME the nature of Oslo was undeniable, even for the most obstinate Oslo Believer. Here were the weapons spread out on the docks for all to see. Here was the proof that Arafat and the PLO itself were directing the terror, that they would NEVER comply with ANY Oslo-like Accord, that the PLO was planning a huge escalation of violence. Here was the proof that Israeli niceness and offers of concessions and compromise were interpreted by the PLO as signs of weakness to be exploited through escalating terror and violence. Here was the proof, if any were still needed, that the PLO had no interest in any state as a framework to pursue the welfare and wellbeing of the Palestinian people, but rather solely as a base from which to launch attacks on Israel. Here was the proof that any "suffering" of Palestinians was hardly due to Israeli "closures" or sanctions but due to the PLO using its funds to amass weapons of terror and aggression.

   But, I guess I am just getting old. Once again, I succumbed to the temptation to think that THIS time the Oslo Camp would collapse. Like Fukayama, who keeps predicting the "End of History", I keep expecting the "End of Oslo". And we both are wrong. Israel’s Left would pursue appeasing the PLO even after the PLO would put them inside concentration camps.

   Within moments of the capture of the PLO’s Ship of Death, the Oslo Love Boat, the Labor Party’s Titanic, Shimon Peres and his henchmen were out in force to explain why nothing had changed and that Israel was still seeking to hold "talks" with the PLO to achieve new agreements which no doubt the PLO would honor and with which it would comply. Sharon muttered some rhetoric but did not toss Shimon Peres into prison. And his military brass are already issuing statements congratulating the PLO on the reduced level of atrocities (although Jews are still being shot every day) and stating that a few more such days of tranquility and Israel can start to implement the Mitchell Commission appeasements (Haaretz Jan 9, 02).

   Haaretz’s Pink Flamingo columnists then conscripted themselves as the PLO’s mouthpieces, their usual routine role. Repeating each and every lie of His Ugliness. First, it was not for sure that the PLO had organized the Ship of Death. Maybe it was the Hizbullah. Maybe Arafat did not know about it and it was renegade PLO lower officials. Maybe Iran was not really involved, only some corrupt lower officials THERE who accepted some payoffs.

   Then along comes David "Yellow Wind in His Shorts" Grossman, now the most radical of Israel’s Literary Left. Even A.B. Yehoshua this past week suddenly "hates Arafat" after decades of slavishly serving him, and Amos the Scarecrow of Oz is keeping an embarrassed low profile. But not Davy the Red. The Gross Man wrote in Haaretz that of course it was understandable that the PLO should use its resources to import a Ship of Death in violation of all Oslo Agreements and as an act of war, because after all the Palestinians were still under "occupation", that most heinous of all crimes, and so the only proper response to the Ship of Death is to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and Gaza of Jews and turn the "territories" over to the PLO with no quid pro quo. Israel must respond to the PLO’s Ship of death through capitulation and self-annihilation, as usual.

   Davy the Red says he sees no difference whatsoever between the PLO bringing in its Ship of Death to massacre Jews and the Zionists smuggling in arms and illegal refugees to drive out the Brits before 1948 or to build their state. In fact, I suspect he sees no difference between the PLO’s Ship of Death and those nice little boats at Small World in Disneyland.

   Most of the others at Haaretz have similar opinions. Yossi Beilin and the rest of the PLO’s parliamentary contingent in the Knesset agree that the Ship of Death just proves how correct they have been all along and how Israeli concessions to the PLO need to be accelerated.

2. Meanwhile, Israel’s Lord Haw-Haw, Uri Avnery, head of the commie Gush-Shalom movement, father of Israeli anti-Zionism, is holding a conference, no doubt funded once again by the New Israel Fund and by the EU, about how Israeli military officers should be put on trial for crimes against humanity because they defended Israel. After all, instead of defending the country by capitulation, these officers occasionally shoot the Palestinian Nazis trying to murder Jews. Among those participating in Avneri’s Nuremberg Rally will be Runaround Shu (Shulamit Aloni), Prof. Adi Ophir, one of Tel Aviv University’s Tenured Reds, and two far-left generals, plus a rep from the PLO.

3. Some of you may remember when a yeshiva student in Brooklyn named Yankel Rosenberg was murdered by some black hoodlums incited by the Rev Al back in 1992. The bros were convicted of murder. But now their lawyer, my guess is he is a nice assimilationist liberuhjew, got their conviction overturned and so entitled to a new trial. And so the New York Afrofascist hordes led by the Rev Al have something to celebrate this winter.

4. In the latest judicial atrocity by Israel’s Supreme Court judicial activists, the Robed Rascals have ruled that Israel’s Rabbinate is not entitled to declare which food plant is kosher and which ain’t. The issue came up when the Rabbis cancelled the kosher certification of a food plant that was using the same equipment to prepare kosher and non-kosher food products (which is a No No from a halakhic point of view). The plant of course would be free to sell its products as non-kosher foods, that is, with no kosher certification. But the owners ran to the Supreme Court posse and they issued their fatwa that the Rabbis in Israel, unlike in the US, had no right to withdraw the kosher certificate of the plant simply because the food produced there was not kosher.

5. I happened to catch Amnon Rubinstein, a leader of semi-Marxist Meretz and ex-Minister under various governments, also a professor of constitutional law at Tel Aviv University, on the radio last evening. Comrade Rubinstein was explaining why he supports creation of a "constitutional court" in Israel, naturally with his own brand of justices sitting on the bench. He says that Israeli democracy needs to be improved, because after all there are all sorts of things where the majority of the public wants ONE thing, yet the Knesset does not approve it. For example, the majority of the public wants buses and malls operating on the sabbath but the Knesset refuses to cooperate, and that shows how undemocratic is Israel.

   Got that?

   Now let us note that not since ancient Athens were public policy questions decided through the momentary popular polling of the public. Indeed, what the good professor really wants is a situation where laws get passed through pushing buttons on one’s TV set and transmitting the votes to a counter.

   Morever, the good prof is upset because the Knesset does not approve those items supported by the majority of Israelis that HE happens to support, and so he seeks to impose them on the Knesset through the innovation of a constitutional court or through an email poll.

   But consider some other things that most Israelis support. Most Israelis support the death penalty for Arab terrorists. Most support expulsion of the families of Arabs cooperating with terrorists. Most support the jailing of Arab politicians openly endorsing terror and violence and the banning of Arab parties and organizations that support aggression against Israel. Most would support the jailing of Shimon Peres. Most support the expulsion of the PLO from the "territories". Would Comrade Rubinstein also support the idea that the Knesset and the cabinet be coerced into obeying these wishes of the public?

6. I have always considered the Reconstructionist Movement in the United States to be the Barnum and Bailey version of Judaism. The Reconstructionists should have named themselves Deconstructionists. They promote trendiness as the highest form of ageless universal holiness. Their "theology" is a bizarre mix of Politically Correct dogmas mixed with warm and fuzzy huggy-feely rhetoric. At Reconstructionist synagogues people can pray to the Great Whatever. The Reconstructionist "Rabbinic" Seminary is a little bastion of Far-Left silliness and deconstructionism. It grants ordination to assorted PC Rabbis and Rabbetts. It has even made its place in history by granting Rabbinic Ordination to Arthur Waskow, the Woodstockischer Rebbe, this 30 years of course after Waskow first ordained himself a Rabbi. Waskow’s "theology" is a mix of Marxism, radical environmentalist claptrap and good hemp. And apparently he is a pretty good representative of all that is Jewish in the Reconstructionist movement.

   The Recons are so wacky that few even regard them as being a "branch of Judaism". Few other than the Jerusalem Report, that is. The Jerry Report long ago decided to rope off for themselves the Diaspora Far Left, since the Jerusalem Post was aiming for the center. The Report regularly runs the ravings of Waskow (whose Destroy Israel!! writings have also been carried recently by the Village Voice). In its Dec. 31, 01 Saint Sylvester issue, the Tom and Jerry Report interviews a Recon "Rabbi" named Jeremy Schwartz (remember that Mel Brooks movie where he keeps yelling May The Schwartz Be With You), a pastor at a Decon shul in Connecticut, who has decided to devote his pulpit to proving that the Maccabees were fanatical religious extremists, little better than settlers and Zionists, irrational zealots, violent hoodlums.

   The Jews would have been much better off if they responded to Antiochus by smoking a lot of dope Tikkun-style and hugging the trees. Now THAT would have taught those damn Greeks a lesson.

Steven Plaut

You can e-mail your comments to Steven at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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