FROM POST ZIONISM TO ESPIONAGE: STEVE PLAUT
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9419
Published: 04/10/10
From Post Zionism to Espionage
by Prof. Steven Plaut
The Israeli Far Left considers rightists to be congenitally violent. Are left wingers congenitally disposed to treason?
It was long before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir that the Israeli Left, led by the nose by Haaretz newspaper, chanted in unison what has become its fundamental political axiom: Political violence is a congenital inclination of the Israeli Right, especially of those “settlers” and the religious Right. Political violence is exclusively a plague coming from the Right, never from the Left, they long insisted. After the assassination of Rabin, the assertion became a matter of unchallengeable theology.
Not only was Rabin himself assassinated by a religious right-wing student, they reminded everyone. Every non-leftist in Israel was collectively and morally guilty of Rabin’s death. In addition, Jack Teitel, a deranged ex-American Israeli from the rightwing fringe, left a bomb at the door that injured the leftwing Prof. Zev Sternhal. Baruch Goldstein, another ex-American, shot up the Shrine of the Patriarchs in 1994. An Israel rightwing thug once threw a grenade into a march of Peace Now protesters, killing one. Rightwing hotheads regularly get into confrontations with the police and soldiers in the “occupied territories,”
All that was enough for the Israeli Left and its captive Israeli mainstream media. All that “proved” that members of the ideological Right are all criminals, violent, would-be murderers. Every confrontation of a settler and policeman reinforced the chorus. After the incident with Prof. Sternhal, several tenured leftists attacked me on two chat lists for Israeli academics, accusing me of having caused the attack because I had dared to criticize Sternhal earlier for his radical leftist anti-democratic political opinions.
The media obsession with the supposed congenital inclinations towards violence of Israeli Right-wingers long served to obscure the congenital inclinations towards treason and espionage by a great many members of the Israeli Left. The simple fact of the matter is that every single incidence of anti-Israel espionage has involved Israelis from the Far Left.
The scandal that was just made public in Israel, after a local court order prohibiting its publicity was lifted,
involves Anat Kam, a young far-leftist traitor, who conspired with Haaretz newspaper to leak classified military documents. She stole about 2000 classified military documents and passed them on to her Haaretz handler, a leftist journalist named Uri Blau, now in hiding in the UK. Haaretz ran some stories in the past using what it had extracted from some of those.
Kam was not the first Israeli far leftist to be involved in treason and espionage. Mordecai Vanunu, the notorious nuclear spy, was a member of the Israeli communist party. Marcus Klinberg spied in Israel on behalf of the Soviets for years. Azmi Bishara, who spied for the HezbÃAllah terrorists, was a leading member of Israel’s pro-terror Arab Left.
The worst espionage-cum-terror ring that operated in Israel was organized in the 1970s by the kibbutz-born
communist Udi Adiv. (After serving his jail term, he now teaches in Israel’s Open University.) Tali Fahima was a far-leftist who was imprisoned for helping her Palestinian terrorist boyfriend plan terror attacks.
In the 1950s it would have been hard to find any member of the Israeli communist parties not collaborating with the Soviets.
Hundreds of Israeli leftists, led by Neve Gordon of Ben Gurion University, are promoting world boycotts of Israel these days, as well as mutiny and insurrection by Israeli soldiers.
And there are quite a few other leftist traitors running about today. Curiously, Haaretz never ran any editorials about the congenital inclinations of far leftists to engage in treason and espionage.
After the assassination of Rabin, every single Israeli newspaper and leftist commentator denounced Bar-Ilan University, the religious university where Yigal Amir had been a law student. Bar-Ilan should be shut down, insisted many. It is a den of rightwing violence and it is morally responsible for Yigal Amir, they bellowed. Well, not a single one of those same people has called for closing down Tel Aviv University this week.
Anat Kam was a student in TAU history and philosophy departments, both of them among the most monolithically anti-Israel academic departments in Israel. Together with the sociology and political science departments at Tel Aviv University, one would have to search with a candle to find faculty members who are not communists. Not a single medium in Israel is denouncing the radicals at Tel Aviv University for inspiring and breeding Anat Kam, nor calling for the university to undertake a complete ìcritical self-examination to understand its own guilt, which is what they had demanded of Bar-Ilan.
In 1940 Winston Churchill shut down all the newspapers and media operated by the British Union of Fascists, the pro-German fascist party led by Oswald Mosley. It was one of his first acts as Prime Minister. Some 740 leading members of the party, including Mosley, spent the duration of the war in prison. Like Haaretz, their newspapers had launched a peace campaign (with Nazi Germany!) and reflexively supported the enemies of their country in just about everything.
Until now, Haaretz was a newspaper of treasonous political stands, but not a newspaper actually actively involved in treason and espionage. Half its columnists are the Israeli moral equivalents to Lord Haw-Haw. It has a market share in Israel of 6% or 7%, and I suspect that at least half its subscribers get the paper in spite of its anti-Israel ideology and thanks to The Marker, its business section, the best business supplement in Israel. (I am one such subscriber.)
Now we have all discovered that Haaretz has gone beyond mere cheering on of treason to engage in it. Will Netanyahu have the courage of Churchill and shut down the newspaper for the duration of the war? Will he imprison extremists supporting the countryÃs enemies in time of war like Sir Winston? By the way, what Kam did was worse than what Jonathan Pollard was convicted of in the US, so Kam and Blau should be sentenced to a prison term at least as long as that being served by Pollard.
Haaretz for its part is bragging about its role in the espionage and trying to spin it as a great act of patriotism. Really. Almost the entire newspaper this weekend is devoted to patting itself on the back for having run Kam and Blau. It was a great act of citizenship for peace insist the editors and Op-Ed writers. After all, among the 2000 classified documents stolen by Kam and passed on to Haaretz were some that described Israeli military plans to continue to conduct targeted assassinations against Hamas terrorists in spite of an Israeli Supreme Court order that commanded the military and executive branch to stop those assassinations.
So Haaretz was just whistle blowing, bleat the conscripted writers. Just preventing violations of the Court ruling.
Now if the Israeli military were indeed planning to ignore the Supreme Court ruling, they should be cheered for doing so and awarded medals. That is because the Supreme Court ruling that prohibited targeted assassinations of terrorists who have not been read their Miranda rights was itself grossly illegal and unconstitutional. It was one of the worst outrages by Israeli Supreme Court justices dedicated to judicial activism, the anti-democratic doctrine of judicial tyranny that insists that the court need not base its rulings on actual laws or constitutional powers.
That is not how Haaretz is spinning it. Haaretz strongly supports judicial activism because the judicial activists usually impose items from the leftist agenda upon the country in their rulings. Haaretz also lead the crusade against the ex-Minister of Justice Daniel Friedmann, who endeavored to rein in the judicial activists. There is absolutely no legal basis for the Israeli Supreme Court to interfere in the micro-management of Israel’s war against terrorism. The Court has no legitimate standing to dictate to the military how to pursue its tasks. If the military were really planning to ignore the Court (and it may just have been preparing contingency plans in case the Knesset voted to overturn the Court ruling), then that might have been a golden opportunity to challenge judicial activism and rein in Israel’s anti-democratic activist judges.
Meanwhile Kam has become the poster girl of Israel’s far Left, which is increasingly open and brazen in its treasonous political positions. For years the Israeli far Left, along with its journalistic mentors at Haaretz, has been supporting the elimination of Israel and its enfoldment into a Palestinian bi-national state, promoting the Palestinian Right of Return, organizing lawbreaking and insurrection by soldiers, the vandalizing of Israel’s security wall and engaging in violent hooliganism against soldiers and police, supporting all demands by the terrorists, cheering on acts of Arab terror, and serving as human shields for murderers. Espionage is but a mere baby step beyond all that.
Comments are closed.
