by Steven Plaut
So let us see if we have this straight. The British parliament decides to “recognize” the “state” of “Palestine.” It thus reverts to exactly the same displays of courage and integrity that it showed back when Britain recognized the right to self-determination of the Sudeten Germans in 1938. All this from Britain, the occupier of Gibraltar, the Falklands, Wales, Scotland, Ulster, and the Channel Islands. The Brits are joined by Sweden in a similar belch of “recognition.” You remember Sweden, the country that was too cowardly to choose a side in either World War and that provided iron ore to feed Hitler’s war machine. Yes, Sweden, which refuses to recognize the rights to self-determination of its own Samis, and whose journalists recycle medieval blood libels about Jews murdering gentiles and selling their body parts. Other European countries are expected to follow. Why “Palestine” is any more worthy of being “recognized” than ISIS, another terrorist gang claiming to be a state seeking “recognition,” is never explained.
Now an interesting twist to the story is the demonstration of the Israeli Radical Left of its contempt for democracy and for Israeli sovereignty. The Israeli Left, led by the tenured leftists, is willing to endorse pretty much anything that is harmful to its own country. It has been urging European countries to “recognize the state of Palestine.” A petition was signed by dozens of Israel’s most anti-Israel academics, plus some non-academic members of the Hamas Lobby. It was organized by Amiram Goldblum from the Hebrew University, a founder of the extremist anti-Israel “Peace Now” organization, and Alon Liel, an ex-diplomat who now teaches for some reason at Tel Aviv University. These two were earlier among the initiators and organizers of a notorious pseudo-poll that claimed falsely to show that Israeli Jews favor “apartheid.” That “poll” last year was an exercise in distortion and tendentious manipulation, designed to generate misleading “statistics.” It was thoroughly discredited by serious social scientists.
Now the same “Israel is an Apartheid Regime” propaganda team is back, rallying the rest of the anti-Israel academic Left to attempt to bypass and neutralize Israeli sovereignty. Their initiative also reflects the utter contempt and disdain that Leftists in Israel have for democracy.
No one is stopping the Radical Left in Israel from peddling its ideological wares in the marketplace of public opinion. In fact the Radical Left exercises unchallenged control over two of Israel’s daily newspapers and also dominates all of the television and radio broadcasts. The problem is that it has been a dramatic failure. Its anti-Israel lobbying has fallen flat on its face. The public simply repudiates the Left’s agenda. Treason just has not proved to be the grand vote grabber that the Left expected. Certainly since the outbreak of the recent battles in Gaza, almost no one in Israel still favors the so-called “Two State Solution.” Almost no one is willing to see Israel “withdraw” from the West Bank and allow a Palestinian terror state to operate there. Almost no one is willing to reward Hamas with “concessions.”
The Left understands that its “ideas” have been rejected by nearly the entire Israeli political spectrum. Since it is incapable of persuading Israelis of the correctness of its agenda, it has decided instead to recruit foreign powers to “do the job” for it and bully Israel. It demands that foreign countries and organizations hostile to Israel coerce the Jewish country into adopting the very political platform favored by the Left that is rejected by perhaps 97% of Israelis.
Goldblum, the organizer of the petition calling for European recognition of the “state of Palestine,” has a long track record of calling for Europeans to suppress and override Israeli sovereignty and impose policies upon Israel from without opposed by the bulk of Israelis. In a notorious speech before an assembly of leftists in May 2012, Goldblum was quoted as calling upon Israel’s Left to stop wasting its time attempting to persuade the general public to embrace its political agenda, evidently because it is clear that the public will never do so. Goldblum said he has no interest in the Israeli electorate and general public and called upon the radical Left to go directly to political groups abroad, outside of Israel, and recruit them as pressure groups to coerce Israel into accepting the agenda of the Israeli Left.
His comrades in Petitiongate are not very different. Among the signers calling on Europeans to “recognize Palestine” are Shlomo Sand, the pseudo-historian from Tel Aviv University who is the most openly anti-Semitic “academic” in Israel, Oren Yiftachel, who has built an “academic” career by asserting that Israel is an apartheid regime, plus a gaggle of card-carrying communists, tenured anti-Semites, and Hamas aficionados. The presence of such people on the faculties of Israeli universities tells you pretty much all you need to know about the state of academic standards here.
The only thing the signers of the petition detest more than their own country is freedom of speech. The Israeli far Left is a fascist movement that ferociously opposes not only Israeli sovereignty but also democracy and freedom of speech for non-leftists. Critics of leftists must be silenced and indicted, insist the Far Leftists, because the exercise of freedom of speech by non-leftists produces violence and it is a clear and present danger.
Meanwhile the number of Tenured Leftists openly calling for violence and murder grows. The leftist Attorney General never prosecutes such people for their calls to murder. They are just engaged in protected speech, you see, unlike Rabbis who write controversial books or Non-Leftist protesters expressing their opinions boisterously. Many of the tenured extremists seek to suppress academic freedom for Non-Leftists, especially for critics of the Left, and also freedom of speech. Goldblum, the initiator of the petition for “recognition of the State of Palestine,” has a long track record of filing anti-democratic harassment SLAPP suits against those who disagree with his extremist opinions. Ben Dror Yemini, a Dean of Israeli journalism, has denounced Goldblum as an anti-democratic fanatic.
The Israeli signers of the petition calling upon European countries and others to negate Israeli sovereignty and to “recognize” the “state” of “Palestine” not only hate their own country, but they also hate basic democracy and human freedoms. “Peace Now,” whose name in Hebrew is Shalom Achshav, should change its name to SHISIS = Subverters and Harassers of Israel and of Israelis. It may yet merge with ISIS. Its head should be renamed the Grand Israeli Scheisskopf.
Steven Plaut is a native Philadelphian who teaches business finance and economics at the University of Haifa in Israel. He holds a PhD in economics from Princeton. He is author of the David Horowitz Freedom Center booklets about the Hamas and Jewish Enablers of the War against Israel.
Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/recognizing-a-terror-state/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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