Building Homes for Arabs in Israel - A Mitzvah?

As we reported this week, several left-wing organizations, led by Rabbis for Human Rights, have launched a campaign to rebuild demolished illegal homes for Arabs on state-owned lands in the southern Hevron Hills.
Might they be unwittingly fulfilling the mitzvah of settling the Land?

A certain randomness is necessary to keep the actual terrorists off balance.

Uri Avnery Finds a "Fascist"

In the 1940s Uri Avnery ran his own one-man pro-nazi party, whose official salute was a Nazi raised hand.
Writing on the Counterpunch neo-Stalinist pro-jihad web site, the Hamas' favorite Israeli journalist Uri Avnery announces that he has identified an "Israeli fascist". It is none other than poor Esterina Tartman!

The fact that he chooses to make this scoop on Counterpunch speaks volumes. Counterpunch is little more than a front for al-Qaeda.  It regularly calls openly for Israel's destruction and insists Israel has no right to exist.  Its editor, Alexander Cockroach er I mean Cockburn, is a notorious Stalinist anti-Semite who claims the Jews spread anthrax in the US and that Israel was really behind the 911 attacks on the US. 

Counterpunch is best described as a leftwing Neo-Nazi web site.  It likes to publish Israel-hating Jews like Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe, Uri Avnery and Neve Gordon.  Just a few days ago it ran a neo-nazi conspiracist piece claiming Israel was behind the 911 attacks on the US and also ran its new banner heading  to denounce Israel:

Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers!

WHAT DID ISRAEL KNOW IN ADVANCE OF THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS?*

Those Celebrating "Movers" and Art Student Spies*

Who were the Israelis living next to Mohammed Atta?*

What was in that Moving Van on the New Jersey shore?*

Was the Mossad Tracking the 9/11 Hijackers in the US?*

How did two hijackers end up on the Watch List weeks before 9/11?

At last, the answers. Read Christopher Ketcham's exclusive expose in CounterPunch special double-issue February newsletter. Plus, Cockburn and St. Clair on how this story was suppressed and ultimately found its home in CounterPunch. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling1-800-840-3683  Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe NowGet CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year  (Neo-Nazis have been claiming for years that the arrest of some Israeli moving men under suspicion of visa violations on Sept 11, 2001 proves that Israel and not al-Qaeda was behind the 9-11 attacks on the US.  I suspect that Counterpunch writers were actually involved in teh 911 attacks on the US--SP)

Uri Avnery was disowned by his own mother, who regarded him as a traitor.

Well, recently some interesting new material was published about Uri Avnery, the grand fascist identifier and Cockburn's favorite Israeli anti-Semite.  It was published Dec 13, 06 here by Alon Dahan, a graduate student at the Hebrew University in "Jewish Thought" (not to be confused with a B-film actor in Israel with the same name).

Against the outrage everyone is feeling about the Iranian Holocaust Denial and the growth of neo-nazism around the world, Dahan writes, one must be aware of the nazi roots of Post-Zionism and Israeli leftist anti-Semitism. Such roots go back as far as the 1940s, and the "Canaanite" movement in Israel in the 1950s. The Canaanite movement was a movement of "Post-Judaism" that argued that the new emerging "Israeli" would be a new nationality altogether, composed of ex-Jews and ex-Arabs, with no ties to the Jewish Diaspora, practicing no religion, Hebrew-speaking gentiles of pure Semitic "blood". The movement was popular in the 50s among many clueless Israeli "intellectuals." It never managed to recruit any Arab members.

The leading survivor of the early "Canaanite" movement today is Uri Avnery, a fanatic anti-Zionist and anti-Semite, whose Bash-Israel pro-Hamas articles appear everywhere one can find anti-Semitism, on the Right and the Left.

What is not well known is that:
Uri Avnery's original name was Helmut Osterman (Dahan at first writes Joseph Osterman but then corrects himself in the talkbacks), born in Germany, and among the two leading figures in the "Canaanites"; and Avnery/Osterman was an admirer of Nazism.

In 1941, Avnery wrote a pro-Nazi article in the Paris journal "Shem", whose contents were later revealed by the Hebrew University Orientalist Prof. Yehoshua Porat in his book "Shelach V'At B'yado", page 182.  Herr Avnery was also fond of using the concept of "Hebrew Blood" in a racial sense, in the same way as Hitler spoke of German Aryan Blood. In those days he was anti-Marxist, although today has no problem with associating himself with Stalinists. Back then he repeatedly expressed admiration for the great job Hitler was doing in remolding and renewing the German nation. Avnery was an open admirer of Nazi propagandist Alfred Rosenberg, adopted the latter's rhetoric, and repeatedly declared that he saw himself as the Hebrew Alfred Rosenberg (which, in a sense, he is). Avnery ran a tiny "journal" called The Struggle, an obvious imitation of the name "Mein Kampf". He ran his own one-man party, whose official salute was a Nazi raised hand.

Avnery in those days advocated creation of a Semitic "race" that would lead the Middle East to greatness when combined with a new Hebraic non-Jewish culture. As such, he advocated the end of the Jewish people as a national entity and expansion of the new race into its "Semitic Lebensraum" (yes, he used that Nazi concept!). He later wrote of his dream for a new and better Hitler emerging, an anti-Nazi Hitler who will lead the struggle for peace and will promote the Palestinian cause (well, at least he got THAT part right!).

Avnery then left for Israel/Palestine. In the 60s he ran a semi-pornographic magazine called "Haolam Hazeh," as the Israeli Larry Flynt. The magazine also did some scandal mongering. Avnery later ran for parliament and got elected by a sort of protest vote, the same sorts of people who otherwise might vote for Homer Simpson or Cher.

[In the 1960s Avnery wrote "Israel without Zionists", the Bible of Israeli self-hating leftism. Ever since, he has been the Reverend Moon of Israel's far-leftist "Post-Zionists" and he runs the small and violently anti-Israel "Gush Shalom" organization. He is friends with Mikey Lerner and appears in Tikkun.

Dahan then goes on and discusses how Avnerism has become entrenched among the Hate-Israel far Leftists in Israeli academia, among the "New Historians." Among those he specifically names are Ilan Pappe (Haifa U), Moshe Zimmerman (Hebrew U, and Uri Ram (Ben Gurion U).  He cites Prof. Shlomo Aharonson in describing the anti-Semitic ideological foundations of these pseudo-scholars and their need to trivialize and erase all memory of the Holocaust. He describes Ilan Pappe as a Jewish Holocaust Denier (his words), as are, by implication, all those with similar points of view.

Queen Esterina vs. Mordecai Marciano

Over the past few weeks Knesset Member Esterina Tartman (Tart, man, that is her real name) has become something of the Dan Quayle of Israel, the butt of endless political jokes and jabs by comics on TV and in the press.  It began when Tartman came out strongly against the appointment of an Arab politician as cabinet minister, someone who had once organized radical violent anti-Israel rallies.  It escalated when it turned out that Tartman had pretty much fabricated the educational credentials on her resume.  She had also been granted state recognition as a disabled person who could not work, yet was at the same time being touted by her party, Israel Beitenu, led by the Rightwing Avigdor Lieberman, for Minister of Tourism.  Israel by the way has a Ministry of Tourism for reasons that remain one of the great state secrets which no one has ever uncovered.

Anyway, Esterina became something of a national joke and in particular an embarrassment for Lieberman and his party, and in fact for the entire Israeli Right.   Lieberman trashed the idea of making her a cabinet minister and my guess is she will now be perma-muzzled if she stays on in the Knesset.

Meanwhile the hypocrisy of the Israeli media, as always the occupied territories of the Left, is on display for all to see.  First, the behavior of media snobs making fun of poor Esterina's lack of  college credentials should be considered in light of the fact that most of these same people have never gotten around to mocking or objecting to Amir Peretz's having even less schooling than Esterina.   And Esterina has not lost any important wars in recent years, unlike Moustache Pete!

But the media hypocrisy is seen even more glaringly when one compares the Quaylization of Esterina to the downright deference of the Israeli media to Knesset Member Yoram Marciano from the Israeli Labor Party.  If you do not know what I am talking about, that proves my point!

Yoram Marciano  is a Labor Party backbencher.  Marciano is a poodle for Shimon Peres and runs the staff trying now to get leftist Labor airhead Collette Avital elected as the next President of Israel, once Moshe Katsav officially resigns.  Deliciously, Marciano had been acting as the Labor Party consiglieri trying to get Katsav impeached! After all, we would not want any criminals holding office in Israel, right Yoram?

This past Wednesday, Marciano (who, as far as I know, also has no college degree) got drunk and assaulted some security guards outside a Herzliya club, near Tel Aviv.   Seems that when he gets drunk, he confuses himself for Rocky Marciano.   For three days Marciano lied himself blue, trying to lie his way out of trouble Clinton style, claiming the guards attacked HIM and not vice versa.  He filed a false police report against the guards, hoping to confuse things when they filed one against him.  Filing a false police report is a pretty serious crime (as of course is battery).

  Hollywood movie about Rocky Marciano

Now drunken leftist politicians are not exactly a novelty in Israel.   While we will not spread the full batch of police sheets out for you here, perhaps the best remembered lush was Saint Yitz, Yitzhak Rabin, himself. 

Drunken leftists are not usually things about which the Israeli media report.  But Marciano behaved as a violent hooligan and then filed false complaints with the police and kept lying, well after his drunkenness had worn off.

Marciano would have continued to try to lie his way out of trouble and to lie the police into prosecuting the victims of his own violence, except there were too many eyewitnesses who saw what had really happened.  Then today Marciano suddenly changed his story!

Seeing that no one in Israel other than maybe Shimon Peres believed that he was the victim and not the aggressor in the street brawl, Marciano admitted everything, and even asked the Knesset Ethics Committee to punish him.   Oh, how touching. The media are all over themselves, weepy-eyed, saluting his honorable admission and confession, demanding that he be treated with understanding since he has come clean, treated like a fine honest statesman who has his minor faults. 

You know, unlike Esterina.