Yuli Tamir Goes a-SLAPPing

SLAPP suits are anti-democratic harassment suits in which people are sued for “libel” to prevent them from expressing criticism. They are a favorite tactic of the radical Left, which uses them to make sure that non-Leftists are silenced. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation. SLAPP suits are illegal in much of the United States but are a growing pastime for Israeli leftists.

YNET has now reported that Yuli Tamir, Israel’s education czarina, has filed such a SLAPP suit against Channel 10 TV. She was upset because Channel 10 broadcast a news story that Tamir had ordered Ze’ev Jabotinsky removed from the Israeli school curriculum. Jabotinsky was the founder of the “Revisionist Zionist Party” in the 1920s and MAPAI bolsheviks have never gotten over that. Ben Gurion had refused even to allow Jabotinsky’s remains to be moved to Israel.

According to YNET News, “Tamir filed a NIS 500,000 (approx. $145,000) suit against Reudor Benziman, CEO of Channel 10 Tali Ben Ovadia, the editor of the channel's 8 o'clock news broadcast, and Ran Lior, one of the channel's reporters, citing slander and defamation of character.... A Channel 10 News statement said that the network stands by the report and its content, and respects Tamir's fundamental right to have the matter cleared in court. “  Now in libel suits, one is supposed to be prohibited from filing unless one can demonstrate that one was caused provable material damages. Just what were the material damages Tamir suffered due to this report. which was evidently factually correct?

Tamir has already shown her passion for loopiness. She not only demanded that the Israeli school curriculum teach that Israel’s creation was a “Nakba” or catastrophe. She also has a track record of defending the practice of what is euphemistically called “female circumcision”

Now SLAPP suits are more common than you might have thought. It turns out both Professor Zeev Sternhell and myself have been victimized by anti-democratic neo-fascists filing them against us. In Sternhell case, he was successfully sued in France for “libel” by a French anti-Semite named Bertrand de Jouvenel. I myself was sued by the Israeli anti-democratic anti-Semite Neve Gordon for “libel” because I criticized his political writings and activities. That case, in which I was largely victorious on appeal in the Nazareth regional court, is now on the docket at the Israeli Supreme Court to finish off SLAPP suits in Israel altogether.

I wonder if Sternhell will be pleased to discover how much he has in common with me.

Quotes & Notes Corner: Did Sternhell Inspire an Attack?

On Wednesday night there was a pipe bomb attack on Prof. Zeev Sternhell in the heart of "Israeli-occupied Jerusalem." The far-left extremist Hebrew University professor was lightly hurt and there were condemnations left and right.

There's only one problem. No one actually knows what happened. But I think I do.

The attackers, you see, were readers of Haaretz and they decided to follow Sternhell's own advice. As I think he must have written somewhere in one of his articles, "There is no doubt regarding the legitimacy of the armed resistance in the territories themselves. If the settlers had a bit of sense, they would concentrate their struggle against the leftists...."

Oops. Wait a second. Sorry. I looked at a Sternhell article from Haaretz (May 11, 2001). It seems he actually wrote: "There is no doubt regarding the legitimacy of the armed resistance in the territories themselves. If the Palestinians had a bit of sense, they would concentrate their struggle against the settlements...."

Now that, of course, is a completely different thing. What was I thinking?

Much, much more seriously, I believe that the Left to which Sternhell belongs did, in fact, legitimize Arab terrorism in the service of certain goals they approve of. So, some on the Right may have been convinced by that constant far-left incitement - justifying all violence in the service of high ideals - and taken it to heart. What can we do if the goals and ideals of the far-right are different than those of the far-left?

So, Prof. Sternhell, when those who attacked you are captured, can they call upon you as an expert witness in their defense?

Murderer of 'Ghandi' Jailed, but Protectors still Free

A few days ago the murderer of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam ‘Ghandi’ Zeevi was at last sentenced by a Jerusalem court to a prison term of life plus 80 years. The bizarre sentence was because terrorhoids sentenced to mere life in prison sometimes get released, like when they get ill in prison, thanks to inane misplaced ‘compassion.’ (Nuclear traitor Mordecai Vanunu is about to be awarded early release from prison because he claims to have a health problem.)

According to the news story as reported on INN: ‘Majdi Rahima Rimawi was convicted on July 29, 2008 of five separate charges for his role in masterminding the assassination of the nationalist minister outside his Jerusalem hotel room at the Hyatt Hotel near Mount Scopus on October 17, 2001. The 43-year-old terrorist planned, ordered and organized the gang that attacked “Ghandi,” as Ze’evi was affectionately known…. Ze’evi was shot to death by terrorists Bassal Asmar and Hamdi Kur’an, both of whom have already been convicted and are serving life terms in prison.’

Now it is all fine and good that the murderer is behind bars, although I would consider it a lot finer and gooder if he were dancing at the end of a noose. THAT would eliminate any risk that he might get released as part of some new KADIMA bargain sale of terrorhoids.

But it is important to bear in mind that this atrocity has not yet undergone closure and will not have done so until the OTHER people involved are also brought to justice, and in particular not until those who protected the murderers and prevented their arrest are punished.

Below  - Gordon as human shield for murderers:    

The murderers of Zeevi were kept hidden in the “Mukata’a” headquarters of Yassir Arafat in Ramallah, in defiance of all the obligations of the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo accords. While hidden there, the Israel Defense Forces attempted to apprehend the murderers and had the headquarters surrounded. But then a group of “human shields” and “Solidarity with Terrorism” protesters from the anti-Israel radical Left entered Ramallah illegally and interfered with the attempts to arrest the murderers. Years went by before they were finally caught by Israel. 

Among those leading the “Solidarity with Terrorism” human shields that illegally interfered with the attempt to arrest the murderers in Ramallah was Neve Gordon, an anti-Israel extremist at Ben Gurion University. Gordon considers Israel to be a fascist, apartheid terrorist entity and recently has been calling for Israel’s elimination altogether as part of the so-called “One-State Solution,” in which Israel will be enfolded inside a larger Arab-dominated Islamofascist-controlled state. The “One-State Solution” of the anti-Semitic Left should better be called the Rwanda solution to the Jewish problem. Gordon was also a cheerleader for Vanunu and proclaimed him a heroic role model. Above is the photo of Gordon and Arafat from the Israeli press, in solidarity embrace as they defied the Israeli soldiers surrounding Arafat's headquarters and prevented the murderers in the building behind them from being caught.

Gordon and his terrorism-cheerleader colleagues have not been called upon to answer for their role in keeping the murderers of Zeevi free for so long. 

Menawhile, Gordon was promoted and granted tenure at Ben Gurion University on the basis of his large volumes of anti-Israel propaganda being churned out by him and misrepresented as research scholarship.  This illustrates that in some departments at Ben Gurion University serious academic standards are dead.

Gordon also spent considerable time on the Ben Gurion University payroll promoting and defending Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein. DePaul University had the academic integrity that Ben Gurion University lacks and last year fired Finkelstein for lack of serious scholarly work and for trying to build an academic career on crude anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate propaganda.

Last year in the Jerusalem Post Prof. Alan Dershowitz described Gordon thus: "It is my opinion that Neve Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis, Holocaust justice deniers, and anti-Semites. He is a despicable example of a self-hating Jew and a self-hating Israeli."