1. The Israeli government continues in its campaign to defeat Palestinian barbarism through demonstrations of cowardice. Just as the IDF was set to re-occupy the PLO-occupied town of Beit Jalah, which has been the base for firing into Jerusalem neighborhoods for nearly a year, the Sharon government pulls back. You see, Arafat gave an order to his people in Beit Jalah to stop firing into Gilo for a few hours. And when Arafat orders a stop to the shooting we just gotta give it a chance cause we really have no idea whatsoever whether it will hold or not.

2. Shimon Peres and his occupied Foreign Ministry have a new project, training young Israeli students in public relations.

   You know what this means? Soon we will have official delegations of idealistic youths from Israel roaming the globe and explaining to all how the Middle East conflict is all a result of Jewish failure to understand the other, Jewish insensitivity to the suffering of others, Israeli settlements, and Sharon strolling on the Temple Mount!!

3. The Israeli Leftist First Amendment, under which Arab Nazis and Jewish Leftists may say anything they wish including justification of genocide but anti-Oslo dissidents must be prosecuted for "incitement", continues to hold even under the "Rightish" government for Sheriff Sharon. This week Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzberg is being interrogated.

   Ginzberg is not exactly a Quaker, and indeed is a Kahanist leaning zealot. He is being interrogated and may be prosecuted for saying nice things about Baruch Goldstein, the fanatic who shot up the Mosque in Hebron back in 1994. Only problem is, the Attorney General has recently adopted the policy whereby MERELY praising acts of murder and atrocities that have ALREADY taken place is no crime at all, which is why all those Arab Knesset Members and related fascists have never been prosecuted. Now the worst thing Ginzberg is accused of doing is praising an act of murder that already took place (Goldstein’s) and so should be protected speech under these rules.

   Or at least it WOULD be were Ginzberg a pork-chomping leftist bleeding heart.

4. Well, seems Ehud Slobodan Barak is about to buy himself a nice big house in Israel’s most posh neighborhood for a cool 1.2 million buckeroos. The interesting question is, whence came the wampum? After all, as Prime Minister, Barak was not earning much, and before that he was a full-time generalissimo since youth. Moreover, what with Barak’s track record of creative accounting and constructive campaign finance, there are more than sufficient reasons for eyebrow raising.

   Inquiring Minds Want to Know!!!

5. Oh dear. Our Kibbutz brethren seem to have some taxpayer-financed egg on their faces for a change.

   It seems that Kibbutz Beit Alfa, one of the greatest, earliest and most famous of Israel’s kibbutzim and of course a long-time bastion of Labor Party ideology, is busy doing busy with the Mugabe regime of Zimbabwe. The kibbutz progressives in fact are selling Mugabe armored riot-control vehicles with which he can suppress crowds protesting the last rigged election there.

   Now using such vehicles to expel the Jewish "settlers" from the Gaza Strip and Hebron would be one thing in the eyes of the Israeli Kibbutz Left. But how can a progressive kibbutz be selling crowd-bashing machines to Mugabe, one of the few dictators in the Third World almost as bad as Arafat, at the same time that Mugabe murders white farmers and black opposition leaders?

   Not that there is any problem in finding a buyer for the machines. Hell, I’d buy one myself!! Or better yet, I’d give cash to buy them for use by any "settlers" moving in to Orient House to convert it into a yeshiva!!

Copyright © 2001 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission