More From Rav Davidh Bar-Hayim

Two weeks ago, VosIsNeias posted a two-hour interview with Rav Davidh Bar-Hayim of Machon Shilo on its website, which elicted over 160 comments -- as usual, some pro and some (very) con. Hrihurim's post on Rav Bar-Hayim two months back or so inspired an even greater number.

In that spirit, I am posting excerpts from a phone-interview I conducted with Rav Bar-Hayim in August 2007. Some of the material already appeared in The Jewish Press two years ago. Most of the it, however, didn't. Please keep in mind that some of what appears below is uneditted and taken directly from my transcript of the interview. Ellipses indicate that I deleted words, skipped words, or never transcribed them altogether (this is particularly true of one of the last paragraphs).

You also believe that we should rebuild the Beis Hamikdash before Moshiach’s arrival, correct?

It’s not really a question of what I think; it’s a question of what the Torah thinks. The Torah tells us that there is a mitzvah to build the Beit Mikdash. And this is listed by all the authorities as a mitzvat asei. One cannot nullify such plain and overwhelming evidence with some agada or story that tells us it’s supposed to fall from heaven.

You have written that the identification of the chilazon and the process of dyeing wool t’cheles are “well-known today.” Is it really that clear?

I believe it’s very clear and I believe that anyone who has gone into this matter seriously has reached the same conclusion. This is a perfect example of the let’s-maintain-the-galut-reality-of-Judaism-syndrome because here we have a clear opportunity to perform a mitzvah from the Torah and the rabbinical establishment for the most part is disinterested.

.......

.........

The issue of t’cheles is halachically clear and they simply choose to ignore it?

I believe that’s entirely correct, yes – in the same way that’s it’s halachically clear that we’re supposed to have a beit mikdash, it’s halachically clear that we’re supposed to have a Sanhedrin, it’s halachically clear that you don’t give parts of Eretz Yisrael away to your enemies, and it’s halachically clear that you should at least make a fuss when 10,000 Jews are kicked out of their homes and a whole part of Eretz Yisrael is turned to wasteland. And yet certain rabbanim and certain frum Jews somehow manage to not see these things.

You once accused certain people of “painting an Halachic canvas with an ideological brush.” Some would accuse you of doing the same?

The difference between one accusation and another is one has a basis and the other does not. If someone makes a claim related to a halachic issue and doesn’t have any real halachic argument to back it up, but he does have all kinds of ideological baggage and reasons for making that claim, then it’s obvious where he’s coming from. If, on the other hand, the opposite argument says – “Well, it’s a halachic issue, lets look at the halacha. The halacha says this and that and why therefore should it not be so?” – I think it’s clear who’s painting the canvas with an ideological brush and who’s not.

You once wrote, “Galuth-version of the Torah is not the real McCoy; it is a scaled-down model, a product of the cataclysm of the Hurban (the destruction of the Temple) and the collapse of the Second Jewish Commonwealth.” What do you mean by that?

I imagine it’s clear to any thinking person that Judaism in the galut is not the real McCoy because the Torah is not directing itself to a people supposed to live in galut amongst other nations without their own land, without their own state, without their own army, without the beit mikdash etc. If therefore we’re discussing the galut reality of Judaism, well obviously we're discussing some kind of bedieved reality in which the Jews find themselves in and they have to somehow make do with what there is.

And I of course am aware of that fact, and I accept that without any difficulty. When in galut, when that’s all there is, then you do the best that you can…..live according to some kind of scaled down model which retains a certain amount of the original flavor and the original essence of the thing but is not the thing itself.

It’s enough to keep the battery turning over so the engine does not die. It’s like a car that has broken down, has flat tires and the engine is not capable of moving the car anywhere at all. But on the other hand it hasn’t completely died; the engine can be switched on and kept running at a very low rpm to barely keep it running, not more. That’s the reality of Judaism in galut.

……It’s a very major difference in how you approach the Torah. If one is interested in maintaining galut-reality Judaism and everything it entails, then one will fight for the minhag of kitniyot and one will fight the suggestion that one could possibly do netilat lulav on the first day of Sukkot for example (or many other things we recommend, such as nusach Eretz Yisrael for tefillah), but if a person realizes that galut Judaism is only some kind of system to prevent the machine from dying altogether but it’s really not the thing itself, it’s not what we're supposed to be dealing with, and therefore as soon as we have the opportunity to move onto something bigger and better, that’s obviously what we want to do; if that’s your approach, then who has the time to discuss a minhag like kitniyot…..unimportant meaningless.

Another metaphor......coma……alive……just barely……when wake up……and that’s what happened to the Jewish people today……not normal if continue lying and don’t get up and…...return to a normative and full expression of Torah living, Torah Judaism, which is of course centered in Eretz Yisrael with everything that that entails…… It would be rather strange indeed if you were to insist…….to remain and live the Judaism of Hungary or Teiman…….[essentially saying,] “We don’t want the real Torah of Eretz Yisrael, we don’t want the whole, the big picture, we’ll be happy with the crumbs. We don’t want thing itself.”

These are just small examples. We're talking about an entire approach to Jewish living according to the Torah.

[I also asked Rav Bar-Hayim to comment on the following paragraphs which I excerpted from an article he wrote several years ago:]

"The haredi rabbis see themselves as guests in the land of the secular Jew. 'Let the "goyim" decide. Give us our yeshivas and leave us alone. Whose idea was this state anyway?' -- this is the mentality that animates them. Their policy on 'foreign' and defence issues is not to have a policy. After all, it would be unseemly for the guest to tell the master of the house what to do.

"The bare truth is that the haredi rabbis prefer it this way; they would rather let such issues be decided by others. The haredi leaders consider the state of Israel to be a new form of exile. Their aim is to function and survive as Jews did in Europe for centuries 'until the Messiah arrives' -- and in the meantime lead the life of a ghetto Jew, a disenfranchised nobody wielding no real control over his own destiny."

[I couldn't find Rab Bar-Hayim's response to this solicitation to comment.]

Philistines in Herzliya Gymnasium in Tel Aviv

To Left: Last of the Philistines! Dr. Zeev Dagani
Speaking of Philistinism in north Tel Aviv and beyond, Makor Rishon May 22, 2009 had an interesting news story about bigotry and intolerance in the wealthy northern section of Tel Aviv. It seems that one student at the secularist elite Tel Aviv high school, the Herzliya Gymnasium, upset the local powers that be and offended their delicate sensitivities by showing up at school wearing a yarmulke, a kipa. Even worse, he convinced some of his friends also to wear a kipa during class. If he had convinced his friends to smoke pot with him, the school would never even have dreamed of taking disciplinary action against him!

This was an intolerable provocation, insisted the principal of the school. He suspended the felon in question for wearing his yarmulke, and possibly also for perpetrating a drive-by blessing. After all, Israel is a pluralistic democracy and so such things cannot be tolerated with equanimity! In response, the fiend's pals threatened to come to school the next week actually wearing tefillin.

We are trying to find out if the principal plans to arm the staff with automatic rifles and stun grenades to protect his school building from infiltration by students wearing yarmulkes….

The principle of the school is Dr. Zeev Degani, and you can leave him a message telling him what you think of all this here!

Gyno-Terror - Israeli Feminizts Pander to Anti-Semites

Israeli leftists discover a new form of feminism (to the Left)

The International Women's Commission is yet another of those bash-Israel NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that pretend to be pursuing peace neutrally, whereas in reality they are promoting the agenda of Palestinian genocidal terrorists. It is different from the countless other groups because it consists of women. Naturally, it wants to achieve a peace that involves creation of a new state of "Palestine" and naturally it refuses to acknowledge any right at all by Israel to defend its own civilians from Islamofascist barbarism and Palestinian terror, not even its right to protect Israeli women. Its "narrative" of the Arab and is identical to that of the Hamas, except when it comes to proclamations about how important and nice women are.

What is noteworthy is what took place at a recent mahjong klatch of these gyno-racists. Even more significant is the fact that the goings on there were exposed and implicitly criticized by none other than Akiva Eldar in Haaretz on May 12, 2009. Eldar is a far-leftist anti-Israel fanatic and the only good thing ordinarily that can be said about him is that he is less openly anti-Semitic and less openly advocating Israel's annihilation than his two Haaretz colleagues: Gideon Levy and Amira Hass. (Unrelated to this story here, even Gideon Levy had a rare nanosecond of coherence and sanity a couple of weeks ago when he ran a column attacking the yahoos and louts of Ramat Aviv for their bigotry and violence against the Orthodox Jews living and moving into Ramat Aviv!)

The story that is of interest here is this. On international women's day, the IWC held a convocation of its gyno-terrorists and their fellowette travelers. The main topic was Israel's recent "Cast Lead" campaign against Hamas terrorism in the Gaza Strip. The "steering committee" to discuss the Gaza events included as members Prof. Galia Golan, a founder of Peace Now, a radical leftist, and a faculty member at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in "government" – see her web page here (the IDC is Israel's private-sector university).

Also on the committee was Naomi Chazan, a retired prof from the Hebrew University (also political science) and a one-time Knesset backbencher from Meretz. Chazan spoke in Ben Gurion University's rally against academic freedom last week, organized by the politics department there, where she denounced people who dare to criticize anti-Israel "academic" fanatics. Denouncing Israel as a Nazi apartheid terrorist entity is fine, she insisted, but criticizing the people who DO that is McCarthyism and must be censored! A few other Israeli ultra-leftist feminizts also participated. Most of the Israeli contingent willingly signed the conference's proclamation asserting that Israel had just carried out massacres in Gaza and calling for the international community to crack down on Israeli sovereignty and its exercise of its right of defense.

But all was not peaceful and unified in the IWC's Nuremberg Rally against Jews. A bit to my own surprise, Collette Avital, a Labor Party politician and ex-Knesset Member (she ran in the last election but was too far down on the Labor slate to get a seat), refused to sign! She protested the fact that the IWC Declaration was one-sided and that it never even bothered to mention that Israel's operations were in response to years of Hamas rocket attacks and other forms of terror. Collette has her own track record of silliness, such as getting hysterical over magazine ads of women in bathing suits. But the naked anti-Semitism of the IWC was too much for her. She was joined by an ex-Knesset Member from the Shinui party, Etti Livni, who also expressed her disgust at the bias.

The Palestinian women who had been sent by their menfolk to the IWC to sit and smile and mouth anti-Israel slogans announced that they would not sit with any Israeli feminists who justified Israel's exercising self-defense. Golan and Chazan tried to nag the Israeli dissidents into abandoning their position that any IWC statement should denounce ALL acts of violence, even those directed against Jews. But Avital and Livni refused to capitulate to the gyno-terror. Avital resigned and walked out, while Livni stayed in to try to argue from within.

The rest of the Israeli delegation supported the one-sided denunciation of Israel and the endorsement of the "right" of the Palestinians to murder Jews. The Islamists of Hamas and the Taliban continue to serve as their role models of feminist liberation and enlightenment.

Yes, I.F. Stone Was A Communist Spy

(Pictured: Communist writer I.F. Stone)

Back in 2004 I marked the fifteenth anniversary of the passing of radical journalist I.F. Stone with an unsentimental look at the career of the detestable old commie symp. The column was picked up by FrontPageMag.com and generated comment on several other conservative websites and blogs.

The feedback to the piece was almost all positive, but there was one complaint that animated many of the readers who contacted me . What bothered them was that no mention had been made in the column of Stone's employment by the KGB, allegations of which had been circulating for years after Stone's death and that seemed to have been confirmed with the opening of KGB files following the demise of the Soviet Union.

As I saw it, however, the evidence based on those initial KGB reports seemed somewhat circumstantial, and besides, there was more than enough with which to damn Stone based on his own prolific writing.

But as Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes and Alexander Vassiliev make clear in their new book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), there can no longer be any doubt about Stone's ties to Soviet spymasters.

Stone, born Isadore Feinstein, was praised in life and eulogized in death by mainstream journalists for his supposed independence and iconoclasm, and he remains an iconic figure to many in the media.

In 1953, after years of writing for liberal and left-wing publications, he started his own newsletter, I.F. Stone's Weekly, which by the time Stone closed it down in 1971 enjoyed a circulation pushing 70,000.

By then, of course, the tenor of the times was such that Stone, unemployable in the 1950s, had became a regular recipient of awards and accolades from his peers. Forgotten or overlooked in the rush to lionize Stone was his history as a shameless apologist for Stalin.

Stone's insistence on viewing the Soviet Union as worthy of support, even in the face of the Moscow Trials and Stalin's purges and executions, led his otherwise sympathetic biographer Robert Cottrell to write that "there was something disingenuous in [Stone's] willingness to suspend judgment or to refuse to criticize still more forcefully the terror that was being played out in Soviet Russia...."

Cottrell described how Stone came to be seen by anti-Communist leftists as "an apologist for the hammer-and-sickle"; how Richard Rovere, a writer during that period for The New Masses, a radical journal, viewed Stone as a Stalinist who played "fast and loose with the facts"; and how James Wechsler, a writer with The Nation and later an editor at the then-liberal New York Post, dismissed Stone as "a fairly regular apologist for the Communists."

When a group of American writers and academics broke ranks with the pro-Soviet Left in 1939 to form the Committee for Cultural Freedom, Stone and other die-hards signed on to a vociferous public campaign lambasting "the fantastic falsehood that the USSR and the totalitarian states are basically alike" and commending the Soviet Union for "steadily expanding democracy in every sphere."

Stone would not split with the Soviets until 1956, disillusioned by a visit he made to Moscow in the spring of that year and the Hungarian crisis a few months later. But he never lost his instinctive hostility to free market capitalism, nor was he ever inclined to extend to the United States even the slightest benefit of doubt in any international dispute.

(On Israel, Stone consistently toed the leftist line. Before 1948 he was opposed to the idea of a Jewish state, preferring a binational arrangement for Arabs and Jews, and his attacks on Israel became ever more frequent and shrill after the Six-Day War. By the mid-1970s the viciousness of his diatribes was such that the non-Jewish novelist James Michener termed them "palpably anti-Zionist, probably anti-Israel, and potentially anti-Jewish.")

Talk of possible KGB ties, which began to circulate in the early 1990s, was pooh-poohed by Stone's defenders as nothing more than an attempt to smear the reputation of a fearless speaker of truth to power. And, as the authors of Spies acknowledge, those earlier reports "were suggestive but not conclusive."

Now, however, the authors present new evidence, based on KGB files, indicating that Stone (codename: Pancake) did indeed have ties to Soviet intelligence.

"The documentary record," they write, "shows that I.F. Stone consciously cooperated with Soviet intelligence from 1936 through 1938. An effort was made by Soviet intelligence to reestablish that relationship in 1944-45; we do not know whether that effort succeeded.

"To put it plainly, from 1936 to 1939 I.F. Stone was a Soviet spy."

Speaking of Spain....

Let Israel follow the lead of Spain and jail those who endorse terrorist atrocities!

In the JP this week I have a piece published on how the Spanish are ignoring human rights and collateral damages when they go after THEIR Basque terrorists, but insist that Israel deal with terrorism by capitulating to the demands of terrorists. You can see the piece here. The Spanish are also indicting Israeli military and political leaders for "war crimes." Well:

Let's Do Things the Spanish Way!

(reprint of blog item from June 2002)
by Steven Plaut



At long last, I believe I have discovered the perfect role model for Israel of the 21st century. It is Spain. The new Spain, the democratic Spain. Ok, when speaking with Spaniards we should actually call it Occupied Andalusia, but you know what I mean.

But you see, Spain is a country that deals with terrorism. It has separatist radical organizations among the Basques and Catalans, and the Basques in particular have learned from the great success of the PLO that bombings and violence are the best way to victory. The Basque ETA is defined by Spain, the US and the EU as a terrorist organization. Not activists. Not militants. Terrorists. I guess cause it does not target Jews.

But democratic Spain has just decided to get serious about ITS terrorists (and never mind that it of course joins the Euro Nuremberg Rally in backing Palestinian terrorism).

You see, Spain has just made it a crime to express verbal approval of Basque terrorism. Anyone saying publicly that they understand or justify Basque terrorism is barred from running for election. Parties holding such a view are to be declared illegal and their leaders and members arrested.

Spanish law criminalizes parties that "preach hatred and violence," unless of course it is directed against Jews. The initiative to ban pro-terror activities and parties is that of the democratically elected Prime Minister Ansar. When the Vatican whined about this abridging the free speech of those who support Basque terror, the Spanish Foreign Minister called in its rep and dressed him down. Spain is serious. No nonsense.

Endorse an atrocity, go to jail.

Actually, anyone wishing to run for office will be required under Spanish law to publicly DENOUNCE terrorism.

Now all Israel has to do is follow the lead of Spain and pass a similar law making it illegal to endorse or justify terrorism unless it is directed against Spain!! [But wait, isn't that sort of what Avigdor Lieberman just proposed? And what all the Eurotrash and their Israeli leftist amen chorus are calling racism?]

You see, in that case, every single Arab political party in Israel will be declared illegal. Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bashara and the rest of the Arab Knesset fascist menagerie will be placed behind bars. So will the Jewish communists who march with and support them. Uri Avnery will be put into solitary, along with scores of Tenured Traitors from the Israeli universities. Meretz is likely to be declared illegal, and I am not sure that the Israeli Labor Party will be able to survive in tact. It goes without saying that nearly all the employees at Haaretz newspaper will be sent to the chain gang. They can enjoy the freedom to endorse genocidal terrorists there with no restrictions!

President of Tel Aviv University rallies to Defend Terrorist Cheerleader Quack

To right: President of Tel Aviv University Zvi Galil, defender of Barghouti: Without a doubt the most amusing news item this week is the decision by Omar Barghouti to relieve his bladder all over Tel Aviv University as reward for the President of Tel Aviv University, Professor Zvi Galil, coming out in support of Barghouti.

Just to bring you up to speed, Omar Barghouti is a non-Palestinian Arab pretending to be a Palestinian, who has organized campaigns for boycotts and divestment against Israel and against Israeli universities. Barghouti claims Israel carried out genocide against Arabs. The same Barghouti was admitted to Tel Aviv University's Department of Philosophy as a PhD student in "ethics." The fact that Barghouti falsely claims that Israel carried out genocide should be enough to convince anyone that he is no scholar and no researcher and does not belong in any university. But the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University is one of the school's departments of wall-to-wall anti-Israel leftist extremism. If there is a single non-leftist in that department it is news to me. Department faculty members are leaders in the campaign to end the existence of the Jewish state.

To Right - other new candidates to research ethics at Tel Aviv University?


When news got out, petitions calling for TAU to expel Barghouti garnered tens of thousands of signatures. But meanwhile, the Leftists for a Second Holocaust started a campaign to support Barghouti and defend his "right" to get into TAU. In other words, Barghouti has the right to promote a boycott of TAU but TAU does not have the right to boycott Barghouti.

Then, the President of TAU, Prof. Zvi Galil, responded to the atrocity perpetrated by the "philosophers" in his university by DEFENDING the decision to admit Barghouti in a public pronouncement (see below). This is the same Galil who recently defended Stalinism Day at Tel Aviv University as a serious academic conference, and generally can be counted on to defend other instances of TAU leftist indoctrination, including inside the classroom. Galil said that Barghouti's politics were not at issue in his admission to studies, only his academic credentials. But the truth is exactly the opposite. Barghouti should have been barred thanks to his lack of any serious academic credentials and the proof that he is a charlatan is his claims about "genocide." In truth, Barghouti was admitted ONLY thanks to his anti-Israel agitprop and anti-Semitism, because being anti-Israel seems to be both a necessary and a sufficient condition to get into the TAU Department of Philosophy!

Prospective PhD students in ethics about to do some research on a head:

Meanwhile, Barghouti has issued his own response to Galil's pusillanimous statement defending the idiocy of the Department of Philosophy in admitting this pro-terrorist clown as a scholar and researcher. It appears here

I bring it to you unedited, so you can draw your own conclusions:

Dear all,
As widely expected, TAU has issued an official statement confirming that they "cannot and will not" expel me based on my political views and activism.
The anti-boycott lobby will now jump to use this as a weapon in their increasingly desperate attempts to fend off the growing threat of academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions, arguing that these institutions respect the academic freedom "even" of boycott advocates.
Other than the evident trivialization of academic freedom implied in such a claim (ignoring all the arguments about suppression of real academic freedom in doing academic work on "problematic" topics, as Oren Ben-Dor, Ilan Pappe, Tanya Reinhart and many others have argued), it misses the point completely on why PACBI, BRICUP, USACBI, among many other small academic boycott groups in France, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Australia, South Africa, etc., have called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The well documented complicity of Israel's academic institutions in the state's colonial and racist policies remains THE main factor standing behind the boycott call. Whether TAU expels me or not, this compelling factor remains true. Expelling me would have added just a bit more fuel to an already blazing fire!
For one of the earliest refutation of the "academic freedom" argument against the boycott, see:
Omar

The official position of TAU is that whenever Barghouti relieves his bladder on the school, it must really just be raining.

Here is Comrade Galil's earlier statement on this matter:
May 3, 2009
Dear Governors and Friends,
I am writing to you to clarify the University’s standing on the recent debate regarding Omar Barghouti, a Tel Aviv University master’s student of philosophy. Mr. Barghouti is leading an international campaign to boycott Israeli universities, despite being a student at one of those universities.
A university campus should be a place that encourages and tolerates free speech, no matter how offensive the expressed opinions may be to the majority of students and Our university has adopted a faculty at that institution, or indeed to the public at large.
similar policy also in previous occasions.
Moreover, if legal issues are involved, a university does not have the authority to prosecute individuals. Rather, such a matter should be pursued by the State through legal channels.
In response, therefore, to the petition calling for the expulsion of Mr. Barghouti that will be submitted to us in the near future, the University cannot and will not expel this student based on his political views or actions. He will be assessed only on the basis of his academic achievements and excellence.
I thank you for your time, and look forward to seeing many of you in May at the annual
Board of Governors meeting.
Yours faithfully,
Zvi Galil

We remind you of the attempt by the tenured Left on the faculty at TAU to
block the appointment to the law school of an Israeli woman army colonel
because she believes Israel has the right to defend itself.
Well, now Tel Aviv University has accepted Omar Barghouti as a PhD student
in "philosophy" (he is now actually completing his MA thesis before he officially starts his PhD thesis) Barghouti identifies himself as a "Palestinian,"
despite the fact that he was born in Qatar and grew up in Egypt.
(Reminds us of Edward Said the Egyptian pretending to be Palestinian.)
Barghouti is an Arab cheerleader for terrorism who runs one of the larger
groups promoting an international boycott of Israel, the so-called
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel,
PACBI (www.PACBI.org). That is correct, Tel Aviv University evidently considers
Palestinian anti-Semitism and terrorism "ethical." He is also a militant
supporter of Israel's extermination under what the anti-Semitic Left these
days calls the "one-state solution." His group has made headlines for
demanding that Israeli universities themselves be targeted for boycott
(see this).

He is on record as claiming that Israel is conducting genocide against Arabs (see
this ). Anyone who thinks
Tel Aviv University has retained any academic standards at all will now
have to think again.
Naomi Ragen has done an expose of Omar Barghouti here

Omar refuses to answer questions about his family connections to
arch-terrorist and mass murderer Marwan Barghouti.
This is the most idiotic idea to emerge from an Israeli institute of
higher learning since the Open University accepted Samir Kuntar, the baby
murderer released from Israeli prison to buy back corpses of IDF soldiers
murdered by the Hezbollah, as a student.

A petition is being collected that demands that TAU expel their resident
doctoral student of terrorism. Go here

To tell the heads of Terrorism Aviv University what you think of their
admission of Barghouti, contact
President, Professor Zvi Galil
Email spiegelr@post.tau.ac.il
zg1@post.tau.ac.il
and galil@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University
P.O. Box 39040
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL
Fax: 972-3-6422379 and 972-3-642-2752
Rector: Prof. Dany Leviatan
Email: leviatan@post.tau.ac.il
and rector@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University
P.O. Box 39040
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL
American Friends Offices of Tel Aviv University:
http://www.tauac.org/site/PageServer?pagename=contact_us and
http://www.tauac.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_tau
Other "Friends of" Groups: http://www.tau.ac.il/friends-eng.html

Another Israel Prize winner who Despises Israel

The Israel Prize generally goes to the most anti-Israel or anti-Semitic professor that the leftists on the prize award committee can identify.

And this year was no exception. My guess is Iran's Ahmadinejad and the folks in the photo to right should get it next year.

The recipient this year was Professor Yehuda "Judd" Neeman, from the TV and Film department at Tel Aviv University. Neeman is one of the most open haters of Israel in Israeli academia, and that is saying a lot. For an expose on him, go to here.

There are layers upon layer of irony in all this. The word "Neeman" means loyal in Hebrew, while Comrade Judd's loyalty is clearly to the Palestinians seeking Israel's annihilation. He has devoted his career as a film professor to destroying any loyalty people may feel towards Israel.

If you think that is an overstatement, consider an Op-Ed article carried by YNET recently, published on Holocaust Memorial Day, crayoned by Comrade Judd. (In Hebrew, it can be read here)

His article is entitled "Nationalism is the Religion of Murderers." It is entirely an indictment of Israeli young people who agree to serve in the army to prevent the Arabs from carrying out a second genocide of Jews.

In the article, he pretends to be showing compassion for young people who undergo tough things while serving in the military. His point is that brutal totalitarianism subordinates the bodies of young people to the state, and he makes it clear he considers Israeli patriotism or nationalism to be right up there with Stalinism and Nazism. He then cynically mentions that in Judaism and Islam the circumcision is supposed to mark the body in a way that reminds young people that their body belongs to the Creator and not to the state. All this is his preparation of the reader for his broadside against the Israeli state and educational system, which seek to motivate young people to serve their country and defend the civilians of their country from annihilation. He mocks soldiers who say about serving in the army, "It is work that has to be done." The Hebrew word for "work" is also a word for a religious ceremony (think of "Avoda Zara") and Neeman denounces such thinking as barbarous. He denounces patriotism as a new form of paganist barbarism. As a "religion of the murderers."

The article ends with a note that the contents are what Neeman was planning to speak at a ceremony for fallen soldiers to be held on Israel's Memorial Day for its slain soldiers the following week after it appeared on YNET. Try to imagine how parents who lost a son would react to Neeman's rant.

'A True Brother'

Jack Kemp, who died on Saturday at the age of 73, was, in the words of longtime public official Alan Steinberg, "not only a friend to the Jewish community - he was a true brother to us."

In a tribute on the Politicker NJ blog, Steinberg remembered listening to Kemp speak at the 1987 March on Washington for Soviet Jewry. "No other member of the House of Representatives more effectively and ardently championed the cause of Soviet Jewry," Steinberg wrote. "In fact, the issue of Soviet Jewry was a cause not only of Jack Kemp but of his family as well - his wife, Joanne, for years served as co-chair of Congressional Wives for Soviet Jewry."

In an interview with the Monitor's alter ego back in 1996, Kemp explained his enthusiastic support for Israel:

"Just look at the Middle East - there isn't any other country there that has been as strong and loyal a friend to the United States as has Israel. There isn't any other country in the Middle East noted for democracy and human rights. Where else in the Middle East, besides Israel, are there free and open elections? Peace - real peace - will come only from Israel's remaining strong."

More recently, on the occasion of Israel's 60th birthday, Kemp wrote:

"To be historically accurate, instead of celebrating 60 years, we should be calling this the "3,000 plus 60" celebration, as the Jews were the original inhabitants of that ancient land and displaced by the Romans who were among the first colonial powers in decimating the Jewish population, thus leading to the Jewish Diaspora of these 3,000 years plus.

"Having been to Israel often since my first trip in 1972 as a rookie member of Congress, I'm always amazed at the incredible progress, juxtaposed against the virulence of its enemies, many of whom would annihilate not only the state of Israel but Jews writ large.

"It's equally hard to believe how much opposition there was 60 years ago this month to a Jewish homeland as the remnant of European Jewry, 6 million of whom were burned and gassed by the Nazis and incarcerated by the brutal despot Joseph Stalin.

"One of my foreign policy heroes, Gen. George Marshall, tried to dissuade President Truman from recognizing the new state of Israel in 1948. He and his Arabist allies in the State Department thought it would erode our credibility throughout the whole world. On the contrary, Truman's support gave moral standing to our nation in keeping with our founding democratic ideals and shared values. Today, Israel is unambiguously our most loyal and steadfast strategic ally in that part of the world, notwithstanding our increasing trade, diplomatic, and strategic friends and allies in the Arabian Gulf.

"I appreciate the perspective of former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Zalman Shoval, who recently wrote, "Israel's triumph should not be seen primarily in terms of victories over its enemies. Instead, it should be considered in light of its achievements. Without natural resources, without any substantial foreign aid during the first 20 years of its existence and in spite of its ongoing security concerns it has created a thriving economy. Israel is a leader in high technology, medicine and related fields, and is a major cultural center. "

No appreciation of Jack Kemp would be complete without noting that it was thanks to him that the Jewish community knew what it was up against with former secretary of state James Baker.

In March 1992, former New York mayor Ed Koch revealed in his New York Post column that during a recent White House meeting Baker had said of Jews: "[Expletive] 'em. They didn't vote for us."

Koch, of course, could not reveal the identity of his source. But he finally broke his silence last year and disclosed that it was Kemp, who in his capacity as secretary of housing and urban development was at the meeting.

Kemp, wrote Alan Steinberg, "was one of those rare individuals of both goodness and greatness."

A Queer Conference at the University of Haifa

Well, you will be happy to hear that academic interest in the Holocaust and its history is not dead at my own University of Haifa. Which brings us to the most important scholarly event of the University of Haifa “Bucerius Institute for Research of Contemporary German History and Society.” The Institute is holding a day-long conference on the status of --- and this is THEIR term, not mine --- “queers” in the Holocaust.

Now I realize you think this is just another Plaut spoof, the sort some people take seriously and do not realize is a sarcastic joke. But not this time, grasshopper. Take a look at this web page in English. Yes, this Thursday, May 7, the University of Haifa is holding a conference on “Queer experiences during the Third Reich and the Holocaust,” together with the University of Hamburg. The “Queer” word in the title is part of the official conference name.

I am not making this up.

From the names of the “papers” to be presented there, it is pretty clear that the entire conference is going to be devoted to misrepresenting the treatment of homosexuals in the Third Reich as comparable with that of Jews. This is the new PC fad in some quarters, to speak about multiple equal-opportunity “Holocausts” of fashionable groups as being morally equivalent to the Shoah, be they Armenians, Gypsies, homosexuals, dolphins, or chicken roasters.

Now let me venture to name two things I am willing to bet a month’s salary will NOT be discussed at this conference. The first is that most “homosexuals” arrested and deported by the German Nazis were in fact communists and other political dissidents being tagged “homosexuals” for purposes of discrediting and humiliating them. In other words, lots of the so-called members of the “homosexual genocide” by Germany were not gay at all.

The second topic that I am willing to wager will NOT be discussed is the role of homosexual ideology in the early Nazi movement, to the point that it became the official doctrine of the Brownshirt SA before the Night of the Long Knives, that numerous Nazi Party leaders in the 1930s were proud homosexuals and homosexuality was promoted as an ideal and ideology by many in the party, and that one reason for the Night of the Long Knives was Hitler’s fear that the open homosexuality in the party might produce grassroots opposition to it.

Here are a few Lecture titles from Haifa conference (again, I am NOT making these up!):

The Implicit Comparison: The Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals and the Holocaust

Finding the Queer in the Search for "Normality": Thoughts on Emigration from and Survival After the Nazis"

Living in the Shadow of Persecution: Lesbian Experiences during the Third Reich

"The Right to be Different": LGBT Delegation to Yad Vashem. Israel 1994
And
Between Homophobia and Anti -Semitism. The Persecution of Jewish Homosexuals in Berlin during the Third Reich by a lecturer from Berlin named Pretzel (really!)


As far as we can tell, the star and singer of Springtime with Hitler in Germany from “The Producers” will not be performing at the conference.

A Protest against Insensitive Tee Shirts and Bumper Stickers

The most curious document has just been discovered by archeologists working in the rubble left behind in a suburb of Munich in Germany. The document is a statement dated August 23, 1944. It was evidently issued by the Reichsamt gegen Rassismus und Benachteiligung, which means the Reich’s Bureau against Racism and Discrimination.

I have turned the original German document, which reached me through some bizarre channels about which I cannot give details, over to a colleague for translation into English. I bring it to your attention because it is curiously similar to some items currently on the internet regarding the wearing of tee-shirts containing slogans of poor taste in Israel today!

Here is the translation:

The Reich’s Bureau against Racism and Discrimination

August 23, 1944
German Comrades and Citizens:

On behalf of the Reich’s Bureau against Racism and Discrimination, I have been asked to formulate this letter of protest concerning insensitivity and racism in the Third Reich. The request came several weeks ago but I was only able to compose the statement on behalf of the Bureau now that I am on leave from my military post as a guard at the camp in Birkenau.

We German citizens of conscience have decided to speak out against an intolerable expression of racism! We refer of course to the wearing of some tee-shirts with barbarous slogans and photographs by Allied troops currently involved in the aggression against the Third Reich. In recent days, we have seen photographs and numerous eyewitnesses have come forward to describe American and British troops in France, Belgium and Holland who were seen in local pubs and cafes during their free hours wearing tee-shirts that carried insensitive epithets about Germans and Germany. One showed a Wiener Schnitzel lying on a guillotine with its tip being sliced off. Another showed Allied soldiers urinating into Bavarian beer mugs. Others contained the derogatory terms “Kraut” and “Gerry” and even “Hun.” Anti-German graffiti is showing up more and more frequently on the walls of Dutch and Belgian public buildings.

There were bumper stickers to be seen on the backs of some American and British tanks and other vehicles that cheered the dropping of incendiary bombs on German citizens. And posters being placed in the towns of French villages under the military occupation of the Allied imperialist forces showed German cities in flames with accompanying slogans celebrating the fires. This is even without beginning to describe the insensitive anti-German rhetoric and behavior of the Soviet Red Army soldiers.

I think we can all agree that this sort of thing is intolerable. We call upon the League of Nations to convene a special assembly to denounce the racism and intolerance being displayed by Allied soldiers. We also ask that the Pope speak up.


There is no doubt that this entire war was caused by the racial intolerance and bigotry of American, British and Russian soldiers, not to mention the thuggish French and Yugoslav partisans. These people simply refuse to accept Germans as fellow human beings, entitled to respect and dignity. Our Bureau is striving to stamp out racism in the New Middle Europe by demanding that all such graffiti, posters, and tee-shirts be banned at once. Only when these expressions of anti-German intolerance and racism are removed will there be any hope for tranquility!

On behalf of the Reichsamt gegen Rassismus und Benachteiligung

Hans Schikelgruber, Hauptamtsleiter