Mommy Knows Best

I have long been of the opinion that Israel could be saved if all of the country's politicians were kicked out and replaced with grandmothers and mothers-in-law. I concede that I base this in large part on a sample of one - my own mother-in-law. Born in Iraq, she is entirely sensible about the Arab-Israeli conflict, and has been since 1967. She predicted correctly that every one of Israel's goodwill gestures would be taken as signs of weakness by the Arabs and escalate violence. When an Arab threw a fish at then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan in a West Bank market in the late 1960s, and Dayan, instead of sending the Arab to swim with said fish, just made it all into a nice male-bonding joke, my mother-in-law was convinced Israel was finished. And I know so many other sensible grandmothers and mothers-in-law of other people, I am convinced that the theory generally works.

All of which brings us to the mother of Uri Avnery.

Uri Avnery is the closest thing Israel has ever produced to Taliban John, a man who supports every thing that could end Israel's existence and opposes everything that could preserve it. Avnery is not only a leftist extremist, he is the father of Israeli anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He wrote Israel Without Zionism back in the 1960s. He justifies all Arab terror. He is so extremist that Mickey Lerner has declared himself Avnery's point man in the United States and the New Israel Fund subsidizes the man. Avnery and his handful of Marxist minions weekly invade closed Israeli military areas to show their support for Palestinian terrorism, and they march with all the nice Hamas guys in support of the next Holocaust of Jews. Israel cable TV recently did a long documentary devoted to deifying Avnery. My guess is that Avnery's countless newspaper ads are paid for by the European Union, Saudi Arabia or by Syria, but I cannot prove it. When Arafat was blockaded in his Fuhrer's bunker under the Ariel Sharon hokey-pokey, Avnery raced in to serve as his human shield.

On the other hand, Avnery's late mother was a gallant woman of valor (actually, my own theory is that all leftists choose their political positions simply on the basis of their desire to make their mommies angry). A couple of weeks back, the rightish weekly Makor Rishon published a scoop. Seems that in Momma Avnery's will, she denounced Comrade Sonny and left him without a farthing because she considered him a vile traitor. In her will, she denounces her own treasonous offspring, especially for his serving as the ideological Monica Lewinsky of mass-murderer Yassir Arafat. She stated that because of her son's traitorous activities, she was cutting him off with nothing.

If only she could run for the parliament today.

Avnery?s lucky he still has the European Union on his side.
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Steven Plaut teaches Business Administration at the University of Haifa.