1. Subject: Live Report from Manger Square

   "Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is Ritz Kahn from CNN, broadcasting live to you this evening from Manger Square in the town of Bethlehem. Tonight we will report to you on the most bizarre story ever. A baby who should have been born three years ago in the year ZERO has refused to leave its mother’s womb. For three years she has stayed in the manger, trying to convince her baby to be born. We have the baby’s father here with us, Joseph the Carpenter. Tell me, Joe, how did all this get started?"

   "Well, Ritz, it all started when that moron King Herod decided to turn Bethlehem over to the Philistines. They decorated the town with big posters of this ugly face with a stubble, bobbing chin, and a kafiya. When it was time for the baby to be born, he stuck his head out, took one look at that horrid face and disappeared back inside. He has refused to come out ever since!"

   "Let us ask your wife how she is feeling."

   "Ok, Mary, we’ve got a guest."

   "Mrs. Carpenter, I am Ritz Kahn. I understand your baby refuses to be born."

   "Yes, it has been three years now. He was just so frightened by that awful face."

   (Voice coming from Mary’s abdomen): "I taught I taw a terrorist. A BAAAAAAAD terrorist."

   "Mary, have you been watching cartoons again?"

   "I am sorry Joseph, but there is just not much to do here in the manger all day. And Oprah just has reruns."

   "So let me get this straight, Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter. The unborn baby can already talk?"

   (Voice from Mary’s abdomen): "Baby no likums dat bad man. He scare baby. He reminds baby of dat Joey Buttafuocca."

   "And even worse is that no one comes here to visit me anymore, Joseph. That nice John the Baptist was arrested for incitement against Herod and our other friends all had their cars stolen by the Philistines."

   "But, Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter, can’t King Herod help you? Maybe get rid of those scary posters?"

   "Oh he is just lying about, doing nothing all day with Salame."

   "Bet Salame would go well on a Ritz."

   "Stick to the script, newsboy."

   "The sad thing is that our baby was prophesized to start his own religion."

   "Well, why don’t you just move with your Mrs. here to Los Angeles. Then the baby will not see that ugly poster. And besides, a new religion is created each day in Los Angeles. He can join the Hare Krishnas or the Scientologists or the animal rights people."

   "Ugh, Los Angeles, Mary says she’d rather live in Gaza with the Amalekites."

   "Joseph I just can’t stand it any longer. If junior does not come out now I will have a fit."

   "Oh, no, Mary, oh Jesus Christ."

   "What was that you said, Joseph?"

   "I said Oh Jesus Christ."

   "Hey, you know what, Joseph, I think I like that better than ’Irving’."

   "Back to you in CNN headquarters. This has been Ritz Kahn."

2. No parody can REALLY do justice to the sudden interest of the world in the "right" of Yassir Arafat to prance about Bethlehem on Christmas Day. Suddenly every anti-Semite in the world is desperately interested in the "right" of Yassir Arafat, Islamist terrorist, to preside over Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem. The Israeli Left, allied with the PLO, is suddenly all upset that not allowing Arafat to go to Bethelehem "violates freedom of religion by Israel", and never mind that Arafat’s religion is not Christianity but rather Nazism, never mind that he would go there for political posturing and nor for religion, never mind that Arafat destroyed Joseph’s Tomb to exhibit his respect for religion and has still not restored it to Israel in a violation of Oslo that would justify re-occupation of the entire West Bank. And never mind that the REAL way to alienate the Christians of the world would be to allow His Ugliness into Bethlehem on Christmas.

   I long ago argued that ultimately the real sin of Israel that will stir up Christian hatred of Jews was the turning over of Bethlehem to the fascist rule of the PLO. A crime that Christendom will have trouble forgiving.

3. When Sharon was first elected, I was a tiny minority voice on the non-Left, warning that Sharon would prove just another pusillanimous Netanyahu and would pursue Oslo Lite. I was dismissed at the time as a senile curmudgeon and immoderate. After all, was not every anti-Semite in the world and every Leftist in Israel screaming what a monster Sharon was, and surely THAT proved he was ok and would do everything needed?

   If there was any doubt left about the accuracy of my prediction, it was removed this week when it was revealed that Shimon Peres had been conducting appeasement negotiations with the PLO over the past few weeks with Sharon’s knowledge and on Sharon’s behest. Yes, while the buses and the children were being blown to smithereens by the PLO’s suicide bombers, Sharon and his faithful sidekick Simple Shimon were conducting "talks" secretly with the murderers and the Nazis. No, Peres was not acting as the "perpetual underminer", as he had once been labeled by Yitzhak Rabin, but as rep for Ariel Sharon, demon of the Israeli "Right". Sharon had also been sending his Kojak-lookalike son Omri to His Ugliness repeatedly for the same purpose.

   In other words, the very same government headed up by Sheriff Sharon, whose raison d’etre was suppposed to be to put a STOP to all "talks" with the PLO under fire while the PLO was murdering Jews every day, has in fact been conducting such talks all along. The same Sharon who has been insisting his government WANTS the PLO to have its own state. The product of these appeasement meetings was the newest "Peres-Abu Mazen" version of Ribbentrop-Molotov Accord, which would grant the PLO a state with Israeli recognition within 8 weeks in exchange for the PLO continuing to murder Jews and violate Oslo. And after getting its state, the PLO would THEN be asked to conduct more talks with Israel about someday stopping the terrorist attacks on the Jews maybe.

   Now it is true that Sharon decided to diss Arafat over Christmas, Ho Ho Ho. But no one really thinks Sharon is serious about warning His Ugliness that He’d Better be Good I’m Telling You Why.

   Sharon wants the PLO to arrest the murderers of Zeevi. Ho Ho Ho. Even if they WERE as opposed to being invited in for Christmas caroling, would the murderers be turned over to Israel as the PLO is obligated to do under Oslo? You gotta be drunk on Xmas eggnog if you think so. Sharon has no more intentions than Peres to condition any pow-wows with or concessions to His Ugliness on the PLO actually complying with its Oslo obligations. And Sharon is still perfectly willing to acquiesce in the world’s campaign to paint Arafat as someone who is "just not trying hard enough to stop terror," instead of stating unequivocally that Arafat is the SOURCE of all Palestinian terror. That Arafat is to Palestinian terror as bin Laden is to Sept 11 and Khaddafi is to Lockerbie. In other words, Sharon is as pusillanimous as Netanyahu. At least Peres has an automatic defense: when he is eventually put on trial for treason, he can plead insanity and no court on earth will question that.

   Meanwhile Sharon, like the rest of the Oslo cult, still thinks that if he allows his Foreign Minister to cook up yet another "deal" with the PLO and offer it a statelet on a nice Oslo silver platter, then after THIS deal the PLO will at long last comply with its obligations and stop the terror. How many times have we heard THAT before? And Israel’s politicians will continue to believe in they pink bright petal prospect of a future deal with the PLO that will produce peace, down to the day when the last Jew has been shipped into concentration camps.

Steven Plaut

Copyright © 2001 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission