Calling the Kettle Black - Very Non-Kosher

Here is extreme left-winger Akiva Eldar in Ha-Ha-Haaretz:-

The use Harel and his friends make of the language of democracy is in the best case sanctimonious hypocrisy, and in the worst case malicious cynicism.

Chutzpah to the nth degree.

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What Means "Islamist" and Who Is Fomenting Revolution in Israel

[The fomenting is below]

From a 2003 piece on someone who I read about many years ago, Sayyid Qutb (pronounced KUH-tahb),
"the intellectual hero of every one of the groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda, their Karl Marx (to put it that way), their guide":

...even before his voyage to America, he was pretty well set in his Islamic fundamentalism. It is true that, after his return to Egypt, he veered into ever more radical directions. But in the early 1950's, everyone in Egypt was veering in radical directions. Gamal Abdel Nasser and a group of nationalist army officers overthrew the old king in 1952 and launched a nationalist revolution on Pan-Arabist grounds. And, as the Pan-Arabists went about promoting their revolution, Sayyid Qutb went about promoting his own, somewhat different revolution. His idea was ''Islamist.'' He wanted to turn Islam into a political movement to create a new society, to be based on ancient Koranic principles. Qutb joined the Muslim Brotherhood, became the editor of its journal and established himself right away as Islamism's principal theoretician in the Arab world.

The Islamists and the Pan-Arabists tried to cooperate with one another in Egypt in those days, and there was some basis for doing so. Both movements dreamed of rescuing the Arab world from the legacies of European imperialism. Both groups dreamed of crushing Zionism and the brand-new Jewish state. Both groups dreamed of fashioning a new kind of modernity, which was not going to be liberal and freethinking in the Western style but, even so, was going to be up-to-date on economic and scientific issues. And both movements dreamed of doing all this by returning in some fashion to the glories of the Arab past. Both movements wanted to resurrect, in a modern version, the ancient Islamic caliphate of the seventh century, when the Arabs were conquering the world.

The book I read was THE DUAL NATURE OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM by Johannes Jansen
wherin he describes and analyzes from original Arabic sources the Islamic incarnation of such a fusion of religion and politics.

This extract of another article highlights the problem the West faces as for example whether to prefer Mubarak or let the Cairene street be taken over by worse forces:

...fundamentalism is [intimated to be] a common denominator in Islamic historiography for revival, reform, and radical groups. The third stage is a prelude to fundamentalism's transformation into a "totalitarian ideology." 4...both view political Islam as a radical departure from the basic tenets of Islam adhered to by the Muslim hoi polloi...Arguing that the religious and political components give fundamentalism its dual nature, Johannes Jansen emphasizes violence as a distinguishing feature of fundamentalism...Abul A'la Maudoodi and Sayyid Qutb revised thejahiliyya (pre-lslamic society) doctrine and took Islamic radicalism to the extreme. They shifted attention from European secular nationalism and its concomitant Pan-Arabism to rectifying the "jahiliyya within"...Maudoodi and Qutb's glorification of jihad (holy war) and the shahid(martyr) was a significant change in strategy...although Jansen feels imprisoned by the term fundamentalism, he also uses it in the title of his book.10 In berating the fundamentalists for ignoring the "growth of Muslim thought" in the Middle Ages, Shaukat AIi uses the term Islamist in the title of his book to examine the "dimensions and dilemmas" of the movement, but his chapters refer to fundamentalism.17...Jansen alludes to a 1976 essay in the Commentary, "The Return of Islam," by Bernard Lewis as identifying fundamentalism with Islam in western literature. Lewis does not use the term fundamentalism, but points to a recoupling of religion and power as a "fundamental attitude" in the binary worldview of the post-18th century Muslim resurgence movements. 19While the term was given added circulation in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, what Jansen overlooks is the significance of the year 1976 in the aforementioned work by Lewis. It predates the 1979 Islamic theocracy and American hostage taking in Iran. The publication by Lewis followed at the heel of the 1973 oil embargo against the US and the Netherlands by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a group in which the Muslim countries comprised the pivotal core. And that episode was preceded by the first Islamic Heads of State Summit in 1969 in Rabat, Morocco...This perceived rise (reemergence) of Islamic power was soon transformed from oil to religion with the advent of an anti-US theocratic regime in Iran. It is the anti-western element that is important to note because until after the September 11, 2001 tragedy hardly anyone in the West questioned US relations with Saudi Arabia. And Stephen Schwanz illustrates that point in his vituperation of the ruling AlSaud family's acceptance of the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam.21

4. Yousseff M. Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism. 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Pinter, 1997), pp. xvii, 44. 63-64.
5. Emmanuel Sivan. Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 50, 184.
6. Ervand Abrahamian, Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989), pp. 42-47.
7. Luisa Giuriato and Maria C. Molinari, "Rationally Violent Tactics: Evidence from Modern Islamic Fundamentalism," in Albert Breton. Gianluigi Galeotti, Pierre Salmon, and Ronald Wintrobe, (eds.), Political Extremism and Rationality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 184, 188.
8. Ibid, p. 183fn2.
9. Johannes J. G. Jansen, The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism (London: C. Hurst, 1997), p. xiv.
10. Sivan, Radical Islam, pp. 27-29, 38-40, 47.
11. William E. Shepard, "Sayyid Qutb's Doctrine of Jahiliyya," International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 35, No. 4 (November 2003), pp. 527, 529, 536.
12. Sivan, Radical Islam, pp. 186-187.
13. John Ruedy, "Introduction," in John Ruedy, ed., Islamism and Secularism in North Africa (New York: St. Martin's, 1994), p. xv.
14. Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism, p. xi.
15. William M. Watt, Islamic Fundamentalism and Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 2.
16. Jansen, The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism, p. 17.
17. Shaukat Ali, Dimensions and Dilemmas of Islamist Movements (Lahore, Pakistan: Sang-e-Meel, 1998), pp. 502-503.
18. Bruce B. Lawrence, "Muslim Fundamentalist Movements: Reflections toward a New Approach," in Stowasser, ed., The Islamic Impulse, pp. 32-34.
19. Jansen, The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism, p. 14; Bernard Lewis, "The Return of Islam," Commentary, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January 1976): 40-41, 44.
20. Ali, Dimensions and Dilemmas of Islamist Movements, pp. 74-75.
20. Vijay K. Singh, Security Implications of the Rise of Fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Its Regional and Global Impact (Charlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, 2001), p. 15.
21. Stephen Schwanz, The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism (New York: Anchor, 2003), pp. 80-83. Yet, it was the Standard Oil of California that assured "financial foundation" for the political-religious alliance between the Al-Saud and the Al-Wahhab families. See, Bernard Lewis, This Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 126.

And k/t to SoccerDad for these two reference sources from Bernard Lewis:  One and Two.
_____________

[here's the fomenting]

And if that isn't enough, here is Akiva Eldar fomenting revolution:

Doesn't the West Bank have Facebook?

Don't the Al Jazeera on-the-scene reports about the riots in Egypt spark thoughts of uprising among unemployed Palestinians in the West Bank?

By Akiva Eldar

The riots began in Silwan, spread to Sheikh Jarrah, moved on to Shuhada Street in Hebron and reached their peak in Ramallah. College students and the jobless, along with former Hamas prisoners and embittered Fatah activists, took over the Muqata. Masses of people bearing placards condemning the occupation marched toward the settlement of Psagot. A small group of soldiers who were stationed along the way took fright and fired live bullets at the protesters. News about the death of 10 youths inflamed the Arab towns in the Galilee and the Triangle region, and the outrage spread to Jaffa and Ramle. The Israel Defense Forces seized control of the territories and restored military rule. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced his resignation and dismantled the PA.

A hallucination? The product of a wild imagination? If only.

"If only"?

Helloooo! Police? GSS?

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He'd Rather There Be Dead Arabs?

Akiva Eldar is now angry at USAID.

It has a paving-of-roads program for the PA that bothers him because it bothers Dror Etkes who feeds him stuff.

a significant segment of the road goes through Area C - the 60 percent of the West Bank under exclusive Israeli civilian and military control and responsibility under the interim agreement of 1995 (the second Oslo agreement )

But that doesn't mean that only Jews use those roads. Arabs do, too. Many Arabs.

Eldar and Etkes would rather have poor road infrastructure - and dead Arabs? - rather than safety for human beings?

No concern for human rights?


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Not A Bad Idea, Actually

The demand by Shas Chairman Eli Yishai, as he told the media, to receive a public promise from Livni, preferably signed, that she "does not intend to bring up the subject of Jerusalem in negotiations with the Palestinians," is not even worth negotiating. Livni must inform Yishai publicly, preferably in writing, that he can forget about that demand. She must tell him that if he wants a promise that Jerusalem will not be a part of the negotiations for a final status agreement, he should look for it in the Likud. It can also be suggested to him that on his way there, he should order posters proclaiming: "Livni will divide Jerusalem."

Akiva Eldar
Left-wing radical posing as a political commentator

And, poof!:

Shas Will Not Enter Coalition

(IsraelNN.com) In a politically dramatic announcement Friday, the hareidi-sephardic party, Shas, said it would not be joining a new government under Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni "under any conditions."

Shas announced that its Council of Torah Sages - headed by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef - decided, after its members were polled by telephone, that the party will be staying out of Livni's coalition. The wording – "under any conditions" – appears to rule out the possibility that this is just political brinkmanship or a part of the customary haggling in negotiations between parties.

"Throughout the coalition negotiations Shas did not ask for titles or any political upgrading, but only two things: aid for the weak layers in Israeli society and protection of Jerusalem," Shas stated.

So Funny That I'm Crying?

Debate, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
Oct 2, 2007
Electronic Intifada

On 24 September 2007, EI's Ali Abunimah appeared on the Canadian Brodcasting Corporation program, The Current with host Anna Maria Tremonti. Abunimah was invited to take part in a debate with Israeli journalist and political columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, Akiva Eldar.

Debate?

What are they going to debate about?

The same side of the same coin.

One is an Arab, the other a Jewish Leftist. Where do they disagree?

Extreme Concessionist

The left-wing, radical and progressive media atmosphere created in Israel has led to an almost total domination of public opinion discourse by ideas that are not only extreme and irrational but wrong and dangerous.

Take for example Akiva Eldar.

I have debated him several times and the man simply doesn't really know his facts. His logic is crooked. He is spoon-fed leaks and "ghosts" for others. He picks up weird notions and Haaretz's reputation allows him the veneer of semi-respectability.

Here's his latest suggestion: Give them the Temple Mount

...The only way that Israel and the United States can affect the struggle in the Palestinian camp is to take away the main contentious elements preoccupying the religious extremists - the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem and the problem of the 1948 refugees - and to hand them over to the moderate secularists. On the other hand, if Abbas emerges from the negotiations without sovereignty over the Temple Mount and without Israeli recognition of the issue of the refugees as proposed by the Arab League (an agreed solution on the basis of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194) - he might as well stay home.

In December 2000 then president Bill Clinton reached the conclusion that there would not be an Arab partner in a peace agreement without Palestinian or Islamic sovereignty over the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Gilad Sher, representing Barak in the meeting at which Clinton presented his plan, wrote in his book "Merhak negia" ("Just Beyond Reach"), that the president suggested that the Haram al-Sharif [the Noble Sanctuary, or Temple Mount], including the plaza and the mosques, would constitute Palestinian sovereign territory, and that the Western Wall and its complex would be under Israeli sovereignty. Sher says that during the cabinet discussion on the Clinton plan, Barak told the ministers he was not willing to be a party to such an arrangement, and said: "I have no intention of signing a document that will transfer sovereignty over the Temple Mount to the Palestinians."

...The continued dispute over the excavations the Palestinians are carrying out in the Temple Mount complex suggests that transfering sovereignty to them is no more than a virtual concession for Israel. An agreement that will include UNESCO supervision over the excavations and free access to the Israelis will improve the situation vis-a-vis this sensitive area. Receiving the prestigious keys to the holy site will bolster the pragmatists among the Palestinians, and will make it easier for them to relinquish their wish to use the keys to homes they left behind in Jaffa.

Let's just take his last sentence: Receiving the prestigious keys to the holy site will bolster the pragmatists among the Palestinians, and will make it easier for them to relinquish their wish to use the keys to homes they left behind in Jaffa and ask why? Why, if after 40 years Israel yields and surrenders its most precious property would they consider reducing their pressure to get Israel to yield more? Why not try for a small number of 'returning refugees'? And then increase pressure over a 40 year period and just like they got the Temple Mount, they'll get more entry visas.

What, Arabs aren't as smart as Eldar is stupid?

But to call him "extreme" wouldn't be acceptable in Israeli public debate. Only right-wingers are extreme.