Israel´s Scatological Left

Arutz Sheva ^ | 23 October 2002 | Dr. Steven Plaut

[SJackson]

The media have long since forgotten about those anthrax attacks on the United States last year. And the media and the Washington establishment went out of their way to make it appear that those attacks came from American militia-types and neo-Nazis or skinheads, lest anyone suspect our Islamist friends were behind them. Which makes the news item today all the more interesting. Reuters reports that in Pakistan yesterday the police, working with the FBI, arrested a local doctor who supplied anthrax germs to Islamist terrorists.

I suppose there is something reassuring whenever the world returns to its boring normal routine, and yesterday the world ended its campaign to demonize terrorists. When terrorists blew up Bali, the world was suddenly uncharacteristically outraged. It condemned the "terrorists" for the "atrocity", and demanded harsh retaliation. And then Shimon Peres´ friends from Jenin responded to Ariel Sharon´s goodwill measures the way Arabs always respond to Israeli goodwill measures and blew up a bus yesterday at Karkur, murdering at least 14 Israelis. And within seconds, the BBC and CNN had reverted to speaking of "activists" and "militants", the carcasses of the dead suicide bombers were counted in the "death toll", and every news broadcast was accompanied by explanations of how it was all Israel´s fault for occupying the Palestinians and that only a political deal (meaning capitulation by Israel) could end such tragic unrest. With Israeli leftists agreeing on the air (for balance) with these calls for more appeasement of terrorists.

The other big story from Israel the past few days had to do with the eviction of Jews from an "illegal settlement" in the West Bank. The entire event has more to do with internal Labor Party maneuverings than anything else. Israel´s Minister of Defense, Benjamin "Fuad" Ben Eliezer, is running against his own party´s leftist radicals, Amram Mitzna and Haim Ramon, for head of the Labor Party. The two Shi´ite challengers are painting Fuad as having sold out to Sharon and abandoning the beautiful Left and Oslo purity, and Fuad is lagging in the polls.

To cover his Left flank, Fuad decided to use the army and use force to evict an "illegal" settlement of Jews from their homes in a West Bank settlement. Naturally, Fuad did NOT favor using the army to evict any of the countless illegal ARAB squatters on lands they do not own in the Galilee, the Negev, East Jerusalem, or elsewhere. Sharon, for his part, was perfectly willing to let Fuad posture on the backs of the bad settlers. He wants Fuad´s position strengthened within the Labor Party so that Sharon can continue to sit with him in his coalition (otherwise Bibi Netanyahu might topple Sharon), and - besides - it never can hurt Sharon to grovel before the State Department in Washington and show it how he is using force against those bad settlers. So, in other words, the entire "crisis" has everything to do with Byzantine internal party machinations in Israel and little to do with anything else.

But it gets better. First, the military violates the Sabbath at Fuad´s command to evict the settlers when they are least prepared to resist, showing the Labor Party´s contempt for religion - as yet another maneuver by Fuad to boost his standing with his party´s anti-Judaism radicals. Then, the Sharon cabinet becomes the scene for typical Israeli infantile name calling and cursing. Effi Eitam, the religious ex-general now heading the National Religious Party and Israel´s cabinet Minister of Infrastructure, curses out Fuad for his evicting the good guys from their settlement. Fuad and the Labor Party McCarthyists then dredge out the old boilerplate charges that whenever opponents of the Left call them names, this is criminal incitement and is exactly what caused the murder of Rabin, and so the "RIGHT" is at it again, murdering people with its free speech. Fuad then gets backed by Haaretz´ hyper-bimbo columnist Avirama Golan, who denounced Eitam as a "fascist". (Golan is so extremist that she has been awarded her own TV show on Israeli television; you may recall her as the Feminazi who called for a nationwide boycott of all kosher foods a couple of years back.)

Then to top it off, Shimon Peres blames the whole crisis on - and I apologize for this term being used on a family service - "sh***y rabbis". Yes, he really used that term (Haaretz Oct 22.) To explain Peres´ choice of prose, we must explain the background. Israel´s Left has always argued that Yigal Amir murdered Yitzhak Rabin because some mysterious Rabbis told him to, or at least said Rabin should be killed. As it turns out, no one has ever been able to name or locate any such Rabbis. But the leftist myth of "murderous rabbis" has been inculcated by the Israeli media, by and large the occupied territories of the Far Left.

Then the same Left, which has been organizing mutiny and insubordination in Israel’s army, calling for refusal to obey orders or to serve, is suddenly shocked, SHOCKED I say, when a few Rightists call on Israeli soldiers to refuse to evict settlers. In the days before the eviction this week of the settlers from the "illegal settlement" in the West Bank, groups of Jews and some Rabbis called on Israeli soldiers to ask their commanders not to order them to evict the settlers. But one Rabbi, Zalman Melamed, not only declared any order to evict them to be a violation of Judaism, but also then crossed the line and demanded that soldiers refuse to obey the order. And when the army did move in at Fuad´s orders to evict the settlers, some settlers used active or passive force to resist and more than one fist was raised.

Now let´s back up a bit. Parts of Israel´s Right have an unfortunate habit of trying to co-opt leftist tactics in their own political struggles. The Left believes in infantile conspiracy theories? Then we should also have our OWN infantile conspiracy theories, they demand (like the Chamish "theories"). The Left wants to politicize the Israeli military and foment insubordination when its orders do not meet leftist ideological standards? Then we in the Right should do the same, they believe. The difference, of course, is that when the Left´s calls for mutiny in the military put Israel´s existence in danger that does not matter to the Left because the Left seeks Israel´s destruction. But the Right seeks Israel´s survival and so should know better.

Peres´ crack about "shitty rabbis" presumably refers to Rabbi Melamed and any other Rabbis expressing support for resistance by the "illegal settlers" to eviction. And no, Virginia, Peres will NOT be arrested for incitement, racism, or libel and put on trial for his remark. Meanwhile, let us make a few things clear. The "settlement" in question should not be regarded as illegal. Jews should have the right to live wherever they want in the Land of Israel. The government should not evict the ‘settlers’. And the way to prevent the government from doing so is democratically, using elections (and maybe the courts and media), to oust the Left and elect a government of people who will not declare such Jewish homes to be illegal settlements. When a democratically elected government makes a wrong decision, that decision must be overturned through elections or persuasion and not through organizing mutiny in the military and not through using violence against Israeli troops carrying out their orders. Period.

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Steve Plaut teaches at Haifa University.

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