Nazi Insinuations

For Gideon Levy, Zionism was like Nazism, sort of.

Photo: Flash90

He has a new column up defending, but, of course, Mahmoud Abbas.

Here's the lead in:

"Not one Israeli statesman today intends to apologize for the Nakba – not for the ethnic cleansing, nor for the exiling. But Abbas had no choice but to apologize for his Holocaust remark"

Let's count the ways Abbas needed to apologize:

a. The Mufti was a partner in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust with Hitler and a supporter of Nazi ideology (not to mention the killing of Jews in Eretz-Yisrael in the previous years).

b. Abbas' doctorate is a classic Holocaust denial and revisionism tract.

c. As I noted already, he has apologized previously for the same content but keeps on saying the same things.

But did Jews bomb Berlin cafes, Hamburg supermarkets or Bavarian beer halls in an effort to dislodge Germans from their property, land and possessions to "deserve" gas chambers? Did Zionists term Arabs ideologically as untermenschen?

There is no comparison. Even if Levy adds:

The fact that the Holocaust was much more horrific than the Nakba doesn’t legitimize denial of the other’s disaster, which is never-ending.

The Nakba is not the Holocaust.
But there was ethnic cleansing, of Jews by Arabs during 1920-1948, from hebron, Gaza, Shchem, Jenin, Jericho and Jerusalem. Jews were exiled from Jaffa.

But for Levy, Zionism is, well, sort of, Nazism.

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From Dissent to Degradation

I hope this won't be too deep an observation and I will not make it long (extended references and details are in the embedded links).

Far left forces, mainly but not exclusively American,  consider Israel's military government regime in the territories liberated from Jordanian occupation as immoral, illegal and un-Jewish.  They began and continually attempt to affect a tectonic change in Diaspora Jewry's mutually important relationship with Israel by declaring that military government to be an illegal occupation in the face of major evidence to the contrary 

That "occupation", I think, despite all sorts of outlandish claims, is fair and just in the conditions in comparison to that existed which before 1967, when that administration was applied to regions of the historic Land of Israel as well as today, under the despotic Palestinian Authority rule.  

These forces, in one apparition or another, in one manifestation or another, have always been with us. They fought Herzl. They struggled against the Balfour Declaration. They denied Jewish nationalism. They were either non-Zionist or anti-Zionist. They waged campaigns against President Woodrow Wilson approving the idea of a Mandate that would reconstitute the Jewish National Home. They insisted, despite all past and current evidence, that there should not be a Jewish state, or something quite less than a political entity.

They were called the Bund. The Reform Movment until 1937.  Neturei Karta. The American Council for Judaism. Jewish Fellowship in England. Palestine Communist Party (who actively supported Arab terror in the 1920s and 1930s* and see: Budeiri, Musa. The Palestine Communist Party, 1919-1948: Arab and Jews in the Struggle for Internationalism)

Brit Shalom. Ihud. Breira. Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow. Open Zion. V15's interference in Israel's democratic process. NIF's previous assistance to subversive groups.  Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, Lord Montagu, Peter Beinart. Michael Chyabon & Ayelet Waldman, Tony Judt. The "tragic mockery" of Leon Trotsky. IJAN. Haaretz. Jews supporting Boycott. Breaking the Silence. Mondoweiss. Richard Falk. Ken Roth. George Soros. Noam Chomsky. Norman Finkelstein. Gideon Levy. Amira Hass and Haaretz's owner, Amos Schocken. They, among others, are ideological opponents, and less than pragmatic critics.

And they lost because their thinking was wrong, because their observance of events was incorrect, because their understanding of political, economic, military and cultural elements was in error and worse, they have not learned from their mistakes in the past.

Now, more than ever, the trend of their promotions is leading not to a singular criticism of a specific policy, of an approach, or lack thereof, of a party or a person.  It is directing anger, frustration and self-impotence against Israel as a whole.

Israel, it is claimed, is an "apartheid" state. It has always been a project of settler colonialism is the assertion. It is "racist". And worse. Now, Nazi memes are employed a la Rogel Alpher.

Basically, what has developed, is that the very idea of Israel is to be rejected and it is being pushed forcefully and prominently.  To be generous, it is difficult to think of these op-ed columnists and bloggers and 'intellectuals' and such as truly intelligent, for any claim that that language and contextualization they employ is not what they intend, although many quite openly do, cannot they see what they are creating?

They present an "Israel situation" that is, in the end, a la Judt** and Mick Davis, bad for the Jews.  As Daniel Gordis phrased it, "It’s not about what Israel does. It’s about what, to their minds, Israel is."  Israel is less important than Diaspora Jews and the existence of a Diaspora. Babylon is better than Jerusalem.  That was done in the 1930s by socialists, non-nationalists and ultra-Orthodox and we know that in a few years, they were all proven wrong.  Shalom Asch declared in 1938 that “what Jabotinsky is now doing in Poland [his evacuation plan] goes beyond all limits…Heaven help a people with such leaders.” Asch eventually declared at a press conference in Jerusalem in 1952: “I deeply regret that I fought against Jabotinsky’s evacuation plan”. 

In the past, these ideas led those that held them to betray Judaism, assimilate, join revolutionary movements, assist the detractors of Jews or be eliminated by anti-Semites.

For these new critics of Zion, these new dissenters, the line of their opposition to certain or any specifics has moved to that of generalities and soon, the line to a totality of rejection will be crossed. And they were learn the lessons of those who trod this path before them, while Israel and Zionism continues to triumph.

_____________________________________________________________

*

For example, as described here:  "A squad led by Daniel Abramovich scattered nails on the roads for a few nights, to harass Jewish transportation, and also cut down electricity poles. Two bombs were thrown in Haifa, one of them at the building of the Labor Council. There was also a plan to attack the new dock that was then under construction in Tel Aviv, but it was too well guarded, so the activists set fire instead to a pavilion of the Orient Fair.  Dothan maintains that [Simcha] Tzabari, who was then the only Jew on the Central Committee (Meir Slonim was in prison), bore responsibility for the terrorist policy...Dothan quotes a leaflet written by Tzabari in July 1936 [but not distributed], which explained that by “destroying the economy of the Zionist occupiers through acts of sabotage and partisan attacks, the Arab liberation movement seeks to make the continuation of Zionist colonization impossible.” 

**

"Diaspora Jews cannot influence Israeli policies, but they are implicitly identified with them, not least by Israel’s own insistent claims upon their allegiance. The behavior of a self-described Jewish state affects the way everyone else looks at Jews. The increased incidence of attacks on Jews in Europe and elsewhere is primarily attributable to misdirected efforts, often by young Muslims, to get back at Israel. The depressing truth is that Israel’s current behavior is not just bad for America, though it surely is. It is not even just bad for Israel itself, as many Israelis silently acknowledge. The depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews."

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A Ticking Firebomber Killed

Gideon Levy has a pro-firebomber piece in Haaretz.  It drips empathy for the terrorist.

Okay, he doesn't suggest outright that Arabs throw fire-bombs at IDF soldiers of Israeli civilians but he does attack the army's attempts to protect themselves and Israel's civilians.

He claims the attacker who was killed outside of Bet El, Murad Abu Razi, was shot in the back (although Levy's actual words are "The soldiers shot at them from behind") and

He was obviously not endangering the soldiers as he fled.

Obviously?  Did they know he did not have a gun and maybe would have turned and fire at them?

Although the post-mortem examination found 

that he had been shot with one bullet that entered his back and exited via the chest, on the left side

I won't attempt to argue whether at the time, early evening when the visibility is not perfect, Abu Razi perhaps had also been seen at an angle, turning to his left, rather than at a 90-degree angle,  But I will say that the shot that killed him obviously save a Jewish life in the future.

The dead youth was a terrorist.  He refused at least two attempts to dissuade him from throwing the firebomb.  He was a ticking firebomber.

There are no moral doubts.

Would that his death convince other youths to leave the path of terror.

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Rephrasing Gideon Levy

Gideon Levy pontificates:

One can’t be secular and 

believe in the biblical right to Shiloh...

Why not?

Has not the Biblical historical account been mostly verified by science, by Carbon 14 dating, by archaeological finds?

I would rephrase him:

You need not be religious to believe 

in the Biblical right of the Jews to Eretz-Israel

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Graphic Zionism on Gideon Levy

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More Gideon Levy Snide Malevolence

Here's yet another irrational, illiogical and "in-your-face" Gideon Levy spiteful and malevolently snide formulation:

Think of a terrible scenario: Hamas, heaven forbid, kills Sara and Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s wife and son. Another scenario, no less terrible: the targets are Revital and Nadav Gantz, the IDF chief of staff’s wife and son. What would Hamas have gotten out of such horrific murders? And how would Israel have reacted? Submitted to its demands? Would public opinion have moderated? Would Israel ever forgive?

And what would Hamas benefit if it succeeded, heaven forbid, to kill the prime minister or the chief of staff? Wouldn’t we have found substitutes? Would Israel have renounced its leadership? Bowed its head to its leaders’ assassins? Would Israel have hastened to build them a deep-water seaport and airport in Gaza?

Whoever decided to try to assassinate Mohammed Deif and succeeded in killing Vidad, his wife, and Ali, his son (an 8-month-old infant), didn’t think in those terms. Israelis are never willing to play the opposite-role game and consider what would have happened if we were in their place. It’s part of our dehumanization and demonization of the Palestinians. Murdering their leaders and commanders? Legitimate. Murdering ours? Monstrous horror. How can you even compare?

The point is not that Israel would react similarly to Hamas (and therefore, a la Levy, Hamas is justified in attcking Israeli civilians) but that Hamas is in no way justified a priori in engaging in terror.  Moreover, since it defines itself as group dedicated to eradicating Jews per se, his argumentation is disconnected from whatever morality he attempts to inject into the narrative.

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Who Endangers Israel, Gideon Levy?

In a CNN column today:

...Unfortunately, dehumanizing the Palestinians has become the best tool to strengthen the occupation, to ignore and deny its crimes and enable the Israelis to live in peace, without any moral dilemmas. If the Palestinians are not human beings, there is no question about human rights. This process climaxed in this war and this is the real basis for the moral blindness which has covered Israel.

One of Israel's greatest assets -- as well as the source of its greatest pride -- has been our liberal, democratic and free society. But what we're doing to ourselves now is a greater threat to our existence than Hamas' rockets could ever be.

Yes, that was Gideon Levy.

And, as usual, he gets things backwards, if not upside-down.

It's what he is doing to us by exploiting our liberal, democratic and free society that is a great threat to Israel's existence.

He misreperesents, lies, undermines Israel's public and governmental support and the list is too long as much as he is wrong.

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Gideon Levy. Unfortunately.

Gideon Levy writes:

Only Israel is permitted. Only Israel is permitted to carry out illegal, immoral operations. Only it is permitted to be sanctimonious, to be shocked and to shout from the rooftops when others do the same thing to Israel. Only Israel is permitted to take hostages.

Unfortunately, Gideon Levy is not the only Jew who bashes Israel.

Unfortunately, Gideon Levy is not the only Jew who hates other Jews for being Zionists.

Unfortunately, Gideon Levy is not the only Jew who maligns patriotic and pioneering Jews who are fulfilling the most basic of Zionist values.

Unfortunately, Gideon Levy is not the only Jew who loves Israel's enemies so much that he will twist, misrepresent and misconstrue.  And lie, too.

Dear readers, you are welcome to add your thoughts in the comments sections.


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Gideon Levy: Grand or Petty, All's the Pity

Here is Gideon Levy, again, on apartheid and if I understand him, he's either a grand anti-Semite or a petty anti-Semite.

In either case, all's the pity.

He's published Apartheid, by any other name and claims

No, Israel is not an apartheid state, but the occupation in the territories is apartheid.

Are we really as terrible as all that? Anyone who tries to draw a comparison between the occupation regime in the territories to the South African apartheid regime - and their number is rising constantly - is instantly labeled anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. But the facts justify the comparison. No, Israel is not an apartheid state, but the occupation in the territories is apartheid.
The comparison is legitimate...

...[Brian] Brown, [a South African cleric] notes the distinction between "petty apartheid" and "grand apartheid" within South Africa and between the two regimes. In the case of petty apartheid - racial segregation in places of entertainment and the like - the difference between the regimes is indeed great. But South Africa's blacks, he says, did not launch their battle in order to be able to sit on the same park bench as whites. Their fight was against grand apartheid, the apartheid of institutionalized, violent dispossession. The Palestinians are fighting the same battle. Should we call this comparison ridiculous, baseless, anti-Semitic?
 

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Gideon? Gideon Levy Who?

[Gideon] Levy has relinquished his journalist credentials

Former Ha'aretz editor, Hanoch Mamari

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Ono or, Gideon Levy Loses It

Yes, Ono.  No, that's not misspelled.

It is, however, a play on the Hebrew word for sexual potency.

On.  און.

This appeared in the Haaretz Weekend "Musaf" Magazine this past Friday. pgs. 62-63, written by Moran Sharir, Haaretz's TV critic

Bear with me as I translate and explain.

First of all, I think these are scenes taken from Gideon Levy's appearance in a reality program called "Linked Up" ( or Attached, in Hebrew: M'chubarim ).

Since it's in Hebrew, the panels proceed from right-to-left remember.

Panel One: Gideon on a couch, it seems, with a women alongside. She's looking a bit peeved.

Panel Two: She says, "It's okay, Gideon. Every man has it happen to him at least once in a lifetime."

Panel Three: Gideon says, "You know how it is, I am under much pressure at work.  The heat.  The occupation..."

Panel Four: She's imagining another participant who happens to be Hanoch Daumb, a resident of Elazar in Gush Etzion.

Panel Five: Channel 10 newscaster announces "Today in Hebron a Palestinian child was shot by IDF forces."

Panel Six: "After an hour and a half...." with Gideon grinning.

Use your imagination.

In any case, after the clip where Gideon's son argues with him, that he is rigid-thinking but finally gets him to admit that an Arab who fires off a Qassam should be killed, the son, Uri, says: "At least once, publish a column that you're satisfied with our soldiers." -

here is saying, and it's in English,to his Swedish girlfriend: "I need a challenge in my life...either to write a book or another intifada." -

Has Gideon Levy lost his charm?


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Is Gideon Levy Planning to Leave or Resist?

One might think so ready his latest in Haaretz:-

Hostile takeover

Do you really want to live in a country where the heads of the settlement enterprise allocate its lands, plan its nature sites, rule on its laws and are increasingly controlling its lifestyles?

He is upset and seeks to subvert democracy:

...the name of their game is occupation, of positions of power rather than territory. Their first target is the Israel Defense Forces: Their soldiers and officers are already nearly everywhere. Now they have turned their sights toward the civilian society...a settler as head of the Israel Lands Administration, a settler as director of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the first settler is on his way to the Supreme Court. These are sensitive and important positions of power, but they are only the harbingers of autumn that might usher in a winter during which a dangerous and powerful religious, messianic, nationalistic and patently antidemocratic minority will come to run our lives.

Don't kid yourselves: The settlers are assuming these powerful positions for the express purpose of imposing their ideology. Of course they have the right to apply for them, but anyone with a conscience and anyone who is worried about the character of the state has a duty to try to stop this hostile takeover...But the admission of a settler into the Supreme Court may be the most infuriating of all.

Noam Sohlberg is making his way into the Supreme Court on the wings of his religious beliefs, which have already found expression in his outrageous rulings as a District Court judge...

And he gets downwright nasty:

The settlements are a despicable enterprise based on violence, ultra-nationalism and breaking the law. Every settler has this mark of Cain on their brow. Now ask yourselves: Do you really want to live in a country where the heads of this enterprise allocate its lands, plan its nature sites, rule on its laws and are increasingly controlling its lifestyles?

Is Gideon planning on leaving?

Or joining an armed resistance underground?

After all, he already is a fighter for anti-Zionism with his pen. He already assists the enemy. His sword may be close by?

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John Hari Goes Semantically Nazi

John Hari writes:

Israel is about to make a misjudgement as disastrous – and deadly – as the attack on Gaza. In a few days, it looks as if it could elect Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister once again.

This is a man calling for the violent re-occupation of Gaza to "liquidate" its elected government.

Of course, being an extreme radical progressive liberal leftwinger, and dumb, he was 'borrowing' from Haaretz's Gideon Levy, who wrote:

In his remarks at the Herzliya Conference this week Netanyahu said Israel halted the Gaza operation too soon and should have liquidated the Hamas regime in Gaza. After all, we are experts at liquidation. In 1987 Likud liquidated the Peres-Hussein London Agreement, which would have handed control of the West Bank over to Jordan's King Hussein - a solution that any right-thinking person longs for today. In its stead, we got Yasser Arafat, with whom an agreement could have been reached, but Netanyahu chose to liquidate this option as well. Instead of Arafat, we got Hamas, and after Netanyahu "liquidates" it as well, we will get Islamic Jihad and, after that, Al-Qaida.

Now, I heard Netanyahu in Hebrew and he used the verb למוטט which simply means to "knock down" or "to cause to collapse" (see here).

So, why should Levy use Nazi semantics and Hari follow suit?

Could they hate Netanyahu that much?

Sure.

After all, aren't they crazy? For them, Nazism is a weapon to use especially directed at Jews.


P.S. His email is j.hari@independent.co.uk

I Hope He Still Has A Job

Who?

This employee of Haaretz, a vicious anti-Israel presence in Yesha newspaper, who found his way into a report by Gideon Levy:

They came here from all over the country. Even one of our colleagues from the Haaretz management left his wife at home to go. "I fantasize about this every year, and this year I came," he said, his eyes gleaming. He paid for his dinner before Sabbath began, and ate shnitzel and salads in the abandoned Arab wholesale market.

Another False Prophet

Gideon Levy of Haaretz declares:

With neither sorrow nor grief it may be announced: The Israeli right is dead. After long and difficult death throes it has finally and laudably come to its end.

Which reminded me of:-

God is dead. [Gott ist tot]

(Signed) Nietzsche

Nietzsche is dead.

(Signed) God

And so the deprecation continues, for the Left in Israel is but a vulture seeking to feed on the dead.

But there is yet hope for Levy also writes:-

The radical left, in whose voice the prime minister now speaks, was correct and predicted the truth. To most of the public it has become clear that no peace will be attained that is not based on the outlines sketched in an ad placed by the Matzpen movement in September 1967. That is how far we have come. But in Israeli society's ideological vacuum, the death of the right does not herald the flourishing of the left. It, too, expired a long time ago.

I feel so much better now.

And Less of Levy

That's Gideon Levy of Haaretz (and "Palestine", wherever that is. More of a mind-set and psychological state than anything). He's complaining about American Jewry's financial contribution to Israel, as if he doesn't benefit from tours and conventions and seminars he's invited to by Diaspora Jewry groups):-

...We are dealing with an impatient, aggressive Jewish community, one whose aggression is reflected in its relations with Israel.

In many areas the damage is direct and considerable. The settlements in the territories, for example, would not have thrived and grown had it not been for the big money flowing from American Jews. An investigation by the Ynet news Web site released around two years ago found that American Jews sent $100 million (???) to the settlements in the past decade.

Dozens of Jewish associations foster and finance the most nefarious project we’ve ever had here, from the One Israel Fund to the Hebron Fund, from American Friends of Ateret Cohanim to Shuvu Banim. They are all fattening the settlements, some openly and others under the table. By so doing American Jews are helping to shape and mutilate another state.

The contribution of American Jewry to Israel may, on balance, be positive. They financed and built for us quite heavily; we in turn offered them a safe haven and a source of pride.

Neither side of this equation, though, is relevant any longer. We no longer need their money — certainly not at the price of their interference — and it is doubtful we can still offer them that haven or pride. Let’s part as friends, then.

Let American Jews attend to their own business, and us to ours.

Gideon Levy's "Apology"

His apology:-

This institution, then, was the cradle of the settlement enterprise and its driving force. Most of the students killed in the terrorist attack were second-generation settlers. It should be said again, clearly and unequivocally: Their killing was a criminal act. (An unusual personal comment: On Friday I said in a radio interview, among other things, that the Mercaz Harav yeshiva was a fascist institution; right-wing circles spread a rumor on the Internet that I had said the slain students were fascists. This is not true. In any case, if my comment about the yeshiva offended people in their grief, I wish to express my sincere sorrow and apology).

And the very next paragrpah:-

From Mercaz Harav emerged the rabbis that led the vilest move in Zionist history. Most of the delusional right-wing perpetrators and the mongers of hate for Arabs came from this flagship.

Guess who I think is vile and criminal?

Mocking Gideon Levy

This appeared in, yes, Haaretz, on the satire page written by Yedidyah Meir, "Eppes"-:

Caption reads -

"Excuse me, but all this story about a volunteer who was murdered at

the Ein Shlosha kibbutz seems all too weird to me.

After all, who volunteers to get murdered" - Gideon Levy

The Irrationality of an Extremist

Gideon Levy's thoughts on the flag:-

I clearly remember when I stopped hanging the flag. It was after I saw the settlers dashing through Palestinian villages, fearsome flags waving from their cars to confront and provoke the residents of the land they had invaded. I said to myself that a flag intended for provocation and confrontation is not my flag. I later saw the flag as a land marker, establishing ownership that is not ours. In every settlement and outpost they hung the flag that was my flag as well to "establish facts on the ground."

How can I hang at my home the same flag that flies over the homes of the Jewish settlement in the heart of Hebron, which has expelled nearly 20,000 residents from their homes? How can I hang the flag that flies on the homes of Yitzhar and Itamar, and at dozens of checkpoints designed to choke the lives of our neighbors? How can I hang the flag that flies on the jeeps that burst forth in the dead of night and spread terror in the hearts of little children? The flag became increasingly distant from me; the national flag became the flag of extreme nationalism.