1. Ok, folks, we have a current events quiz for you. Ready? Name the only country in the world where it would be a felony to say that Hitler should have been assassinated. Yep, that singularly democratic country is …. (drumroll) …. Israel. Or at least it will be if the Israeli Left has its way in rewriting the rules of free speech for the country this week. As you know, free speech and free expression in Israel have been under nonstop assault by Israel’s anti-democratic Left, led by the Labor Party and Meretz, ever since the Rabin assassination. Under the Israeli Left’s First Amendment, Arab fascists should be free to call every day for the mass murder of Jewish civilians, Israeli Leftist should be free to exclaim "Great!" every time a "settler" is murdered by the PLO, but anyone saying, "I do not think Oslo is a good idea" or "Yossi Sarid is a modern Pharaoh" should be indicted for criminal incitement. (For a web site on the assault on free speech in Israel, see http://www.primechoice.com/philosophy/shelp/speechisrael.htm)

   In the past few weeks, the rhetoric of violence by the Arab Stalinist-Fascist Knesset Members has risen to new heights, especially when Azmi Bashara, the new hero of the Post-Zionist Left, ran to Syria to call for Israel’s destruction while standing fang-to-fang with the heads of the Hizbullah and with the junior Asad.

   That in turn led the Israeli government to initiate some changes in Israel’s "anti-incitement" laws. Israel is the only democracy around in which "incitement" is even a crime. In any case the anti-incitement laws have NEVER been used against Arab fascists and their leftist amen chorus, but rather used to persecute Israeli Rightists. They were the laws under which the Kahanist splinters were criminalized and banned. They were the laws by which the heads of the Zo Artseinu protest organization were prosecuted and convicted.

   Now that Bashara and the rest of the progressive Arabs are openly calling for Israel’s destruction, the government wanted to tighten up the anti-incitement rules so that these could be prosecuted or at least stripped of their Knesset membership perqs.

   Ah but then in stepped the Israeli Left. You see, in rewriting the anti-incitement laws, the government proposed that a clause be inserted so that people saying they thought bad things (or, if you prefer, good things) should be done to terrorists, mass murderers, or simply to the enemies of their country, should NOT be regarded as engaging in "incitement to violence".

   Not on your life, scream the Caring Leftists. We demand that anyone saying things like, "Israel should assassinate terrorist leaders", or "Israel should kick Arafat’s butt" be prosecuted under the law. Which means that should the Left ever return to power, such as after another year of Likud Incompetocracy, the ONLY people who will be prosecuted are such people.

   So let us make clear what Israel’s Left is demanding. Among the thing for which you may be sent to jail should the Caring Left get its way would be:

   A. Singing that old Spike Jones song from the 1940s, "When der Fuhrer says we ist the master race, we Heil PPPFFFF Heil PPPFFF right in the Fuhrer’s face." Spitting is violence you see. Also singing old anti-German partisan songs.

   B. Singing the World War II song "Hitler Had Only One Left Ball".

   C. Any suggestion that Israel use its military for anything.

   D. Any Israeli officer telling a soldier to fire at a terrorist. (That would be incitement to violence against terrorists and illegal.)

   E. Expressing approval of the execution of Eichmann.

   F. Expressing approval of the execution of Timothy McVeigh.

   G. Saying "Death to the PLO" or "Death to the Hizbullah" or "Death to the Tanzim". On the other hand, all those countless bumper stickers on the cars of Israeli leftists that read "Death to Religious Zealots" would be protected speech.

   In fairness, it should be pointed out that not ALL Israeli Leftists are calling for such things. Some, like the legal commentator for Haaretz Zeev Segel, just think Israel should have no laws whatsoever that would make it possible to prosecute people like Bashara for calling for the violent destruction of the country and for genocide of Jews. Segel, who has never been disturbed by the banning of the Kahanists, is suddenly a free speech absolutist.

   Or is he? As it turns out, I happen to have had some direct personal experience with Zeev Segel’s concept of open and free discourse. About seven years ago, Comrade Segel organized a panel discussion at Tel Aviv University on the issue of affirmative action preferences and quotas. He asked me to attend, although would not pay for my gasoline. The forum consisted of two and a quarter hours of one-sided worship of dumbed down standards and the rest of the affirmative action agenda, presented by feminizts and leftist professors. Tel Aviv University students from the public policy studies program were REQUIRED to attend. Then after two and a quarter hours of North Korean style brainwashing, Segel introduced me and announced I would be given three minutes to present the other side of the debate. I stood up and walked out of the room. Several students ran after me to shake my hand.

2. Now I agree that it is not the usual story about medical neglect in the West Bank.

   As you know, the leftist press every week discovers some pregnant Arab woman or child in need of surgery who was prevented from entering Israel in a PLO ambulance for free treatment, the latest automatic Palestinian entitlement. Never mind that PLO ambulances are regularly used to transport bombs and weapons. Never mind that under Oslo the Palestinians demand to have their own medical facilities as part of liberating themselves from Israeli occupation and oppression. And in cases when the ambulances ARE admitted, the heartless colonialist Israeli hospitals have sometimes actually asked for payment for services rendered Palestinians. Haaretz is AGHAST!

   Well, in his weekend column in Maariv, Meir Uziel described a different medical atrocity. You see, a Palestinian family with a sick 4 year old boy came to the gates of a Jewish colonialist settlement he was visiting and begged them to admit them so their son could be treated. He had high fever and trouble breathing. The Jews admitted him and began to treat him in their clinic. They would have saved him.

   But then suddenly some PLO officials showed up and demanded that the settlers turn the boy over to them to be taken to one of those progressive Third World medical facilities operated by the PLO as part of its state building and liberation. The boy’s parents broke into tears and begged the settlers to allow him to stay with them. They were perfectly willing.

   The problem was that under the deals between the Israeli government and the PLO, the PLO has first dibs on treating any sick Palestinian and no Israeli has the right to say no. To the horror of the parents of the sick boy and of the settlers themselves, the settlers reluctantly turned him over to the PLO medical team, and they drove off.

   We do not have the details on the end of the story, but if we learn when the boy died from his liberation by the PLO from Israeli oppression and occupation, we will let you know.

3. And from the editorial page of the New York Post: Terror’s Friends, In The White House

Copyright © 2001 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission