Monkeyshines (and other items of current interest)
One of the most amusing games in town to watch in recent weeks has
been the mobilization of the Left on behalf of Moshe Negbi. Negbi is a
far Leftist who was sacked recently from Maariv, where he was "legal
correspondent". Not because Maariv has anything against Lefties, mind
you. Indeed Maariv this past week joined the other two main papers in
urging Sharon to abandon his incomprehensibly obstinate refusal to
continue making appeasements to the PLO (a refusal based on nothing other
than the SIMPLE fact that the PLO is engaged in violence and atrocities).
Negbi got sacked cause he refused to print some columns his Maariv
publishers wanted him to print, one specifically involving the acquital of
ex-Minister Kahalani. The Maariv publishers are currently involved in
their own share of scandal, and Ofer Nimrodi, official publisher, is
facing charges of attempting to murder his rivals.
Anyway, Negbi, as mentioned, is a radical anti-Zionist. He was active
in the Yesh Gvul movement organizing military insubordination by soldiers
and refusal to serve, and was a longtime defender of the Leftist
McCarthyist campaign against free speech for anti-Oslo dissidents. For
obvious reasons, he has long been a darling of CNN.
Negbi was a member of the Far-Left journalistic chattering class that
includes nearly all Israel’s journalists. Suddenly, these same
journalists who never had any problem with the monolithic one-sidedness of
Israel’s media are all aghast at Negbi’s sacking. Suddenly they are all
screaming about how important pluralism and free expression are, at least
when it comes to leftists.
There are certain iron rules of the Middle East.
The first is that Palestinians have "inalienable rights", the main one
of which is the right to murder Jews at random because they are so
mistreated.
The second is that it does not matter how many atrocities the PLO
commits, the solution to all the world’s problems will ALWAYS be the
removal of Israeli "settlements" from "Palestinian lands", the latter
"lands" including Jerusalem’s neighborhoods.
And the third is that whenever the Likud is in office, it always tries
to disguise itself as the Labor Party. The Sharon government is deep in
meditation this week over how ready it should be to offer to freeze all
growth in settlements as a "goodwill" gesture in exchange for which the
PLO will do nothing but continue to drop mortar shells on Jews. Shimon
Peres, Sharon’s Foreign Minister and the man who singlehandedly imported
tens of thousands of PLO terrorists from Tunisia and elsewhere into the
suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is calling for a real freeze of
settlements, in which not even "natural increase" will be allowed.
And the fourth is that any Israeli response to Arab atrocities other
than total capitulation always represents stiff-necked Old Testament
obstinacy and retaliation "totally out of proportion". Should the PLO
ever detonate a hydrogen bomb in downtown Tel Aviv and should the Israeli
military respond to this by shooting a few rubber bullets at PLO
headquarters, the entire world, from Bill Clinton down to Lord Haw-Haw Uri
Avnery, will denounce this response by Israel as "totally out of
proportion".
Meanwhile Shimon Peres has issued an official "apology" to the PLO for
the IDF having killed five of its Gestapo policeman, as these had been
"mistaken" for others directly involved in firing mortars, and I can just
imagine Churchill apologizing to Hitler for having killed the "wrong" Nazi
officers.
The Labor Party First Amendment continues to operate under the Sharon
regime. Ahmed Tibi, Arafat’s open agent in the Knesset, called the Chief
of Staff of the Israeli military a murderer and a fascist. Now recall
that "insulting a public official" is a crime in Israel, and the law has
been used to persecute Rabbis and ordinary laymen who criticize leftists
in less-than-polite terms. But - no - Tibi will NOT be prosecuted by the
leftist Attorney General who is seeking an appointment to the Supreme
Court and so is sucking up to leftists who control the appointment
process, who only thinks non-leftists expressing themselves in insulting
manner need go to jail.
Meanwhile Hillary’s husband and Baba Streisand’s guru has taken some
time off from working at his Ozark mountain moonshine still to express his
learned opinion, no doubt based on research while being serviced, that
"Ariel Sharon caused the intifada". This based on Sharon’s visiting the
Temple Mount, a visit almost as controversial as would have been an
Italian politician’s visit to the Vatican.
Residents of Gilo, the southern suburb of Jerusalem that Arafat and
Peres have turned into Israel’s Siegfried Line, insist a mortar shell
landed in their area last night.
AT the margins of Israel’s wacko PC Left there are the even wackier
animal rights nuts. These have long engaged in terrorism against
psychology laboratories and similar installations, and Heaven protect the
woman who dares to walk the avenue of Tel Aviv in fur.
Lately, they have been launching a jihad against El Al because it
declines to refuse to fly laboratory animals to buyers. The animalists
have filed petition with the courts and Israel is soon to have its own
"Monkey Trial".
A synagogue in Moscow has built a replica of a piece of the Western
Wall next to itself and Ehud Barak immediately insisted that it be turned
over to the PLO.
The International Red Cross has announced that Israeli settlements are
a "war crime". You know, unlike the Red Cross’ collaboration with Nazis
during World War II.
Israel Channel One, the state-owned TV station, continues to serve as
the mouthpiece of Israel’s Left under the Sharon regime. Last night it
aired a long "documentary" presenting, for the zillionth time, the absurd
McCarthyistic Leftist version of the Rabin assassination. Namely, that
anti-Oslo dissidents were always nothing but murderous violent anti-peace
fanatic criminals, and that their exercise of free speech and criticism
and protests against Rabin caused the murder. The fact that some people
were aware back in 1995 of whither Rabin’s folly was taking the country,
namely to the CURRENT situation, and the fact that at their margins was at
least a single violent desperate fanatic (Yigal Amir) is something no
Israeli medium has ever debated seriously.
Moshe Feiglin was the head of Zo Artseinu, an anti-Oslo protest
movement under Rabin and Peres. At its height it could mobilize 100,000
protesters and unleash them onto the streets. After the assassination of
Rabin, Feiglin was one of the main targets of Leftist McCarthyism, blamed
for the assassination because he once blocked a traffic intersection and
criticized Rabin’s policies, and was later convicted (under the Netanyahu
government) of "sedition and incitement". In recent months he has been
running a no-hope campaign to challenge Sharon for head of the Likud
party.
Feiglin has a book out, telling his side of the events, his trial, and
his ideas. If interested, it is available in Israel; from fax
972-9-7920172 and in US from 973-736-6654. The book could have used a
native-English-speaking editor. It is titled "Where There are No Men,"
and no that is not a reference to Meretz lesbian bars. Feiglin has
lapses, such as granting a bit of credence to the totally discredited
Chamish theories. But nevertheless, it is an interesting account and
commentary.