Israel Hayom
15 December '11
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1020
1. We thank you, our enlightened brothers, for opening our eyes to the wonders of democracy. Without you, we would not have known that democracy is not directly connected to elections and legislation, and to the negotiations over ideas in the public sphere. Instead, democracy is about accepting your ideas. We thank you, who enlighten us, for delivering us from the dark pit we were in, and teaching us how to vote for one political party while realizing the ambitions of another, in other words, a party that represents your ideas. Thank you for allowing us to fight for our right to think as you do. Truthfully, we had no idea how ignorant and anti-democratic we were, until, through your grace, you gave us the ability to understand that the way things were in the justice system, the media, and academia - were the way things should be. Thanks to you, oh enlightened brothers, we know our rightful place, and are making our way, quickly now, to where we should be: to the back benches of history.
2. Apart from the lamentations of the Israeli media ("We're becoming more and more like Iran and Saudi Arabia"), there are some, as crazy as it may sound, that beg to differ from most of the mainstream Israeli press. Here's Alan Dershowitz this week: "When you read an op-ed column in an Israeli publication, you immediately think that Israel will be like Iran within six months, and that women will sit in the back of the bus like in Alabama, and that the government is fascist. The Israeli media exaggerate." Indeed. And there's more: "Israel's greatest enemies are usually Israelis that live in Israel, and abroad. It is they who attempt to strip complex issues into simple ones." Dershowitz even went so far as to say: "Even if all of the laws that are being proposed now were approved tomorrow morning, Israel will remain a living, breathing democracy, with more vitality than the U.K. and the U.S." These comments are for the attention of the enlightened ones, experts in creating hysteria. Lastly, Dershowitz suggested, "People take responsibility for the exaggerations they publish in the media." Responsibility? You made them laugh.
3. The playwright and director David Mamet wrote in this week's Wall Street Journal, trying to explain why the West is so eager to abandon Israel to the mercies of the Iranian atom. "In abandonment of the state of Israel, the West reverts to pagan sacrifice, once again, making a burnt offering not of that which one possesses, but of that which is another's. As Realpolitik, the Liberal West's anti-Semitism can be understood as like Chamberlain's offering of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, a sop thrown to terrorism. On the level of conscience, it is a renewal of the debate on human sacrifice," writes Mamet. With these kinds of opinions, would theaters in Israel produce Mamet's plays?
4. Newt Gingrich, the Republican contender for the U.S. presidential nomination, is a welcome and refreshing phenomenon in the swollen sea of liberals. He is a former professor of history, who, as opposed to some journalists and politicians, knows a thing or two. Last week he said out loud something that many think in private but do not dare speak under the castrating influence of political correctness: "The Palestinians are an invented people." In terms of the hegemonic Western polemic, this comment is heresy, defiance of the dominant paradigm. Gingrich is, however, a brave intellectual who knows history well, and not someone to surrender to the mumbo jumbo emanating from the house of those who cry "danger to democracy." After the Bar Kochba Revolt, the Romans [2nd Century AD] decided to eradicate the word "Judea" and call the province they had conquered "Syria Palaestina" after the "Philistines," the sworn enemies of the tribes of Judea and Israel in Biblical times. The Philistines, meanwhile, disappeared from these parts. The purpose of the Romans was to disconnect the Jews from their historical homeland by changing the name of the land. Ironically, until just before the establishment of the state of Israel, the Jews saw themselves as 'Palestinians,' while the Arabs of the region [who are now called Palestinians] identified with the Arab nation as a whole. Palestinian identity was, essentially, a negation of the Jewish national identity. It's doubtful whether there is any real connection between the tribes in Gaza, tribes in Hebron, and tribes in Nablus aside from desire to expel the Jewish entity. This state of affairs is heightened in light of recent developments in the Arab countries, where Arab nationalism, imposed by Western colonialism, is in retreat in favor of a return to its default state of families and tribes.
5. Peace Now has won. Nobody will benefit from donations from Bank Leumi. There is a lesson in this which shows Peace Now's [and its minions'] regard for the state. For Peace Now, the competition [for donations to the third sector by Bank Leumi] be damned - as long as the "Im Tirzu" organization loses. Even in the big picture - if Israel doesn't walk the suicidal path that Peace Now is paving, it's time to close up shop and libel it around the world. As it is written: "And the woman who was the mother of the live son said to the King, for her mercies were aroused for her son, 'I beg you my master, give her the living child, but do not kill it!' And the other woman said, 'Neither will I nor will you have him, proceed to cut! " (Melachim/Kings 1, 3:26)
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