1. For centuries the stereotype of Jews was that they were over-achievers. The nations of the world set up quotas and restrictions to keep down the numbers of Jews in institutions of higher learning because it was presumed that if open competition prevailed, Jews would dominate them and succeed in numbers with no similarity to their shares in the population. Jewish student success was axiomatic.

   In Israel a reverse stereotype has been developed by the ruling circles, holding that Jewish students are inherently incompetent and incapable of performing scholastically unless standards are dumbed down and university admissions requirements eliminated.

   This is just the latest importation into Israel of PC fads from overseas.

   As you know, the United States has discriminated in favor of blacks and Hispanics for the past 35 years in affirmative action programs in university admissions. These programs are based on the presumption that blacks and Hispanics are congenitally incompetent and so admissions standards must be dumbed down to admit them. In the past few years the PC jihad has targeted all admissions criteria for US universities. The problem is that no matter how far the testing services bend over to make the tests "culturally neutral", blacks and Hispanics underperform. And if the tests show that black students are on average less competent than whites, it MUST BE that the tests are themselves racist and culturally biased. Never mind that Asian students do far BETTER than whites on the same culturally biased Eurocentric WASP-oriented tests.

   Over the years the PC hordes have sought to invent new tests in which blacks do NOT underperform, but in vain. In test after test and innovation after innovation, the patterns remain. Some blacks do well, but on average blacks do poorly. The PC cult then launched an attack on testing altogether. People should simply be admitted to colleges by racial lottery, regardless of whether they can read and write. In the latest metamorphosis of PC rite, US schools are admitting all students from the top 10% of their high school classes regardless of ability. Meaning a black kid from a slum school who is in the top 10% of his high school class but cannot read and write gets admitted ahead of a white kid in the 11% percentile who knows calculus, Chaucer, and 3 foreign languages.

   The PC cult will not rest until some university admissions policy is found in which blacks do NOT underperform, in which numbers of black admissions would be similar to their share in the population. I have proposed over the years only half in jest that these PC types simply make gang membership and an arrest record the chief criteria for university admissions. I have no doubt that Rabbi David Saperstein of the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center and the rest of the "Political Liberalism as Judaism" form of PC paganism will endorse this idea with great enthusiasm.

   Israeli PC hordes have similarly been leading the assault on standards and quality and testing. There have been calls to eliminate altogether testing for college admissions and simply admit people regardless of qualification, of course with assurances that fashionable demographic groups be properly represented, especially women and Arabs, but sometimes meaning Oriental Jews. The universities have been resisting the calls to dumb them down. Affirmative action reduced standards are already to be found throughout the civil service in Israel.

   Now the latest call has come from the Likud, led by Minister of Finance Sylvan Shalom. If he has his way, Israeli universities will be flooded with folks who do not know their aleph-bet’s nor who can add and subtract. And it goes with saying that reading English is an elitist demand that must be eliminated.

2. One of the main effects of the Oslo process of self annihilation has been the continuous nazification of Israel’s own Green-Line Arab population.

   The latest manifestation to this process is the sharp increase in the numbers of Israeli Arabs participating in atrocities against Jews. Two proud civics activists from among these loyal citizens shut down half the country on Thursday as they plotted to lay bombs in Haifa. They were arrested and now await the usual demonstrations by Amnesty and similar bleeding hearts protesting their mistreatment by Israeli police.

   Speaking of Amnesty, one of the delicious twists in the news in recent days has to do with Denmark. As you know, the Danish Left is out screaming that they want Israel’s Ambassador to Denmark indicted in Denmark cause of supposed "torture" of terrorists when he was head of the Shin Bet. The whole cause celebre of alleged "torture" arose when Carmi Gillon’s leftist friends in Israel made it a media obsession. In any case the "torture" in Israel of which everyone is speaking is when arrested terrorists get shaken from side to side and perhaps awoken at night to be interrogated about their friends laying bombs and murdering children. More generally, one could make a powerful moral argument why Palestinian terrorists SHOULD be tortured. Simply because they deserve to be.

   Be that as it may, it turns out that one of the countries accused by Amnesty International of engaging in "torture" of prisoners is none other than Denmark itself.

3. Since the start of the latest intifada, the BBC of London has made little effort to hide the fact that it has no interest at all in REPORTING news from the Middle East, but instead acting as advocate for the PLO and the Israel-bashing forces of the world. Nary a single story is broadcast without the BEEB putting a Jew-baiting twist to things.

   Now the Jerusalem Post reports that the BBC is coming out of its transparent closet and openly leading a campaign to get Europe to embargo all arms to Israel.

4. A few days a Palestinian taxi driver was bonked on the head by a rock, and was killed when the taxi overturned, and Haaretz reported that it must be Jewish "settlers" who bonked him. Haaretz of course if not a newspaper but rather the daily infommercial for Israel’s Treason-Chic extremist anti-Zionist Left.

   Well, today the newspaper that is black and white and RED all over had to admit that in fact it looks like the same cabbie was in fact bonked with a rock thrown by Palestinians from a rival clan.

   How embarrassing for the Israeli New York Times and paper for people who think!

Copyright © 2001 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission