by Dror Eydar
The Left is still reeling from the Channel 2 expose that caught them with their pants down, trampling human rights • In an embarrassing and aggressive response, the Left is discarding democracy and justice -- because they get in the way of their agenda.
Left-wing activists
demonstrate against the occupation
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Photo credit: Noam Revkin-Fenton  |
The outcry coming out of the Israeli Left
these past weeks indicates that something big has happened. I am not too
concerned with the Channel 2 expose on investigative news program
"Uvda" ("Fact") that revealed that left-wing activists had helped expose
Palestinians who sold land to Jews, knowing that they would be tortured
and killed. After 600 episodes, "Uvda" can now say they devoted one
show to criticizing the Left. The apologetic tone taken by "Uvda" host
Ilana Dayan and her researchers was unprecedented, and it reflects on
the left-wing media's inability to deal with allegations made against it
by one of its own.
Investigative journalism targeting the Right
-- right-wing organizations, the Right's representatives in the Knesset,
the communities in Judea and Samaria, etc. -- are far more common than
the one "Uvda" expose about left-wing activists Ezra Nawi and Nasser
Nawajah. History teaches us that when the Left is accused of
"collaborating" with the "mechanism of darkness" of the Right, it
usually tries to rehabilitate itself and clear its name. After the
"Uvda" expose, I wrote that now we can expect a deluge of investigations
into the Right.
While the "Uvda" scandal was still ongoing,
another Channel 2 news program, "Ulpan Shishi" ("Friday Studio"),
supplied its own controversy. Producer Omri Kronland was sent to expose
the radical Right by posing as the nephew of a rich Texas man interested
in funding the publication of a sequel to "Torat Hamelech" -- a book
that deals with the question of killing non-Jews during times of war,
among other things. The poor journalist was exposed as an imposter
rather easily -- he didn't do his homework and couldn't speak the
language of the holy texts. A website called "The Jewish Voice" exposed
his unconvincing coaxing and posted the recorded conversations with him,
which also aired on Channel 20 television.
In the conversations, Kronland was asked why
his rich uncle loved "Torat Hamelech," to which he answered, "He agrees
with it very much. ... He believes in a Greater Israel and in settling
the land and that all of Israel should be ours. His dream is to create
the land of the Bible. ... He identified with its values. He wants to
donate to the momentum of the second book."
After saying "Greater Israel" several more
times, the hesitant producer tried to get his partner in conversation to
explicitly voice support for extreme rightists who carry out
"price-tag" attacks -- acts of revenge against Palestinians for
terrorist attacks and other perceived injustices.
"Do you support what they do? ... The
youngsters who built communities and fight an active war for greater
Israel? Does the book support that? Encourage it?" he asked.
"What do you mean by 'actively'?" he was asked.
"Uh ... price-tag attacks."
An important rule of thumb when researching
influences on political, artistic or social streams, is to understand
the significant role played by the fringes. It is precisely in those
unsophisticated places that the naked fundamentals guiding the entire
stream can be found.
"Greater Israel," "settling the land," "land
of the Bible," these are terms that many Israelis identify with. But in
the journalist's mind, these important terms are associated with bizarre
ideology on the despised fringes of the right-wing camp. For this
journalist and the bigwigs who sent him, settling Israel and the land of
the Bible are just the flip side of "Torat Hamelech" and price-tag
attacks.
The man who spoke to Kronland eventually
suggested that the "wealthy uncle" help erect an "'Ulpan Shishi' outpost
named after [Channel 2 commentator] Amnon Abramovich." He then sent the
uncle -- meaning the Channel 2 bigwigs -- an encrypted message. "Bava
Batra, page 22."
Bava Batra is the third tractate in fourth
order of the Mishna, Nezikin. It deals with a person's responsibilities
and rights as the owner of property. The page mentioned tells the story
of a scholar named Rav Ada Bar Abba who was sent to test the mettle of
one Rav Dimi -- to see whether the latter was a wise scholar. Rav Ada
Bar Abba did so with one clever question that tested whether the man was
well versed in halachic discourse. Check it out -- the lesson is clear.
Despite the lack of depth in the "Uvda"
expose, it was enough to embarrass the left-wing human rights group
B'Tselem, which employs people who aren't always interested in human
rights. Their response to Dayan and "Uvda" was violent, but that is just
one of many examples of B'Tselem's methods.
Right-wing activist Noam Federman was caught
by B'Tselem on camera throwing stones at Arabs in Hebron and breaking
cartons of eggs. Ostensibly, yet another video of a radical rightist
running amok. The State Prosecution filed an indictment against him.
This week, Channel 10 reporter Roi Sharon aired the security footage
taken from IDF cameras documenting the same incident. This footage tells
a far more complex story than was originally thought. The security
footage shows a resident of Hebron throwing rocks on IDF patrols, on
security cameras and on vehicles belonging to Jews. The man even stands
in the middle of an intersection and arrogantly signals to a military
vehicle to try and catch him. Federman was driving one of the cars that
was pelted by this brave fighter. In response, he exited his car and
threw rocks back at this Rambo from Hebron, who fled and hid behind a
large commercial vehicle carrying cartons of eggs. In his rage, Federman
then smashed a number of cartons.
It is wrong to smash cartons of eggs, and
Federman should be compelled to compensate the owner of the eggs. What I
cannot understand is why the IDF patrol simply left the scene, despite
being pelted with rocks. Anyway, the thing that stinks here is the
method. The skilled B'Tselem camerawoman didn't capture what happened at
the intersection -- a main artery for both Jews and Arabs. She didn't
film the young Hebron man's rock throwing and taunting, and certainly
didn't document the Arab street's tacit cooperation with him. She did
what was expected of her. She documented only the end of the story --
the outcome. In this case, Federman can now defend himself in the legal
arena. But these carefully edited videos are being distributed around
the world, giving Israel and the settlement enterprise a bad name and
adding fuel to the fire of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel.
Watchdog organization NGO Monitor, headed by
Professor Gerald Steinberg, recently revealed that on Dec. 15, B'Tselem
received a 30,000 euro ($33,000) grant from the European Endowment for
Democracy to "fight anti-democratic laws aimed at silencing the
opposition." In other words, the European Union is intervening in
Israel's legislative process. The "anti-democratic" law in question is a
bill seeking to compel nongovernmental organizaations to reveal the
sources of their funding, when more than 50% of the funding is received
from foreign governments. This bill is meant to increase transparency, not to silence anyone.
In the European mindset, democracy means that
instead of respecting Israel's democratic process, they will try to
impose a political stance representing the interests of foreign
countries. The law does not deal with donations made by private
individuals. It deals with the undermining of Israel's sovereignty.
In a confrontation with MK Anat Berko over the
bill, New Israel Fund President Talia Sasson said recently: "A private
individual is far more dangerous. A foreign government is bound by
values. An individual is bound by nothing."
Let us reread the quote above. I have asserted
repeatedly that if you look between the lines, you will see a
totalitarian ideology underneath many of the Left's arguments. This
ideology stems from the Left's inability to trust the intelligence of
the public and its desire to impose a "re-education" of the state. The
irony is that those who speak loftily about democracy are usually the
biggest supporters of enslaving Israel's democratic process to the
control of foreign democracies.
Dror Eydar
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=31303
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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