http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/45670
ISRAELI LEFT RALLIES TO DEFEND DISLOYALTY

By: Steven Plaut

Date: Wednesday, October 20 2010
In recent weeks it has become abundantly clear that there is one
pathological way in which Israel differs from all other countries.
Israel is the only place on earth where large portions of the
country's "intelligentsia" think it obscene and "fascist" to expect
people seeking citizenship in their country to express loyalty to it.

The issue came up because of a bill before the Israeli cabinet and
Knesset amending the citizenship law. Officially proposed by Israel's
minister of justice, it would require non-Israeli Arabs seeking
Israeli citizenship to swear their allegiance to Israel as a Jewish
and a democratic state. (Native-born Israeli Arabs would not be
required to do so and could therefore continue expressing their
contempt toward Israel both as a Jewish and a democratic state.)

This upsets the Israeli Left, in part because it wishes to maximize
the number of non-Israeli Arabs granted citizenship and residency in
Israel. It is part of the Left's demographic assault against Israel's
Jewish character. Leftists also want automatic citizenship granted to
any Arab marrying anyone with Israeli citizenship. In some cases,
these are third or fourth wives of Israeli Muslims.

Other countries, including the United States, do not grant automatic
citizenship to people married to their citizens. In Egypt, a citizen
marrying someone with Israeli citizenship is immediately stripped of
Egyptian citizenship.

In recent weeks, as the vote on the loyalty oath bill approached,
hundreds of Israeli leftists took to the streets to denounce it. Many
proclaimed it a form of fascism. Of course, if every democratic
country requiring a pledge of allegiance were fascist, there would be
no democracy on the planet. Nevertheless, Gavriel Solomon, a retired
leftist professor, declared the law would make Israel "Arabrein" the
way Hitler sought to make Germany Judenrein; Hebrew University
professor Yaron Ezrachi saw the law as proof Israel was becoming a
fascist country; Tel Aviv University professor Chaim Gans claimed the
law was intended to abuse and humiliate Arabs; and Barry Leff,
co-chairman of the leftist group Rabbis for Human Rights, wrote that
the oath is "contrary to Jewish values."

If Israel were a normal country, no one would think there was anything
strange or unusual about its having an oath of allegiance for those
seeking citizenship. Among the many countries requiring such an oath
are (in alphabetical order): Australia, Canada, India, Jamaica, New
Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Romania, South Africa, the United
Kingdom, and the United States. Some Muslim countries, including Saudi
Arabia, Morocco and Sudan, have their own versions of oaths of
allegiance, called bay-ah (or baiyat) to the leader. Curiously,
Israeli Arabs and Jewish leftists aren't heard complaining about any
of those.

Oaths of allegiance are not only widely demanded of would-be
immigrants seeking citizenship, they also are routinely required for
members of the military and those seeking to hold public office in
many countries, up to and including the presidency of the United
States.

Some have argued that the proposed oath is objectionable because
would-be immigrants would have to pledge allegiance to Israel as a
"Jewish and democratic state." Why can France require allegiance to
France as a French state, or Greece require allegiance to Greece as a
Greek (and as a Christian Orthodox) state, but Israel cannot require
similar allegiance?

There are many countries that have proclaimed Christianity, in one
form or another, as the state religion. All Muslim states have an
official religion. They differ from Christian states mainly in that
they tend to prohibit all worship that is not part of their official
religion. There are also Buddhist states.

Israel, by the way, is hardly the only country with a law granting
citizenship to foreign members of the dominant ethnic group of that
country. Some thirty other countries, ranging from Armenia to China to
Greece to Hungary to the Ukraine, have laws that grant preferences by
ethnicity.

Some Israeli critics of the bill have suggested the language be made
more neutral and merely require acknowledgement of Israel as a
legitimate state. But that is pure disingenuousness. The real reason
critics object to the proposed oath of allegiance is that they regard
the very idea of a Jewish state as offensive, even illegitimate. Their
position cannot be disguised with clever word games and alteration of
the language of the oath.

Let us put the matter bluntly. The driving force today among all too
many radical Israeli leftists is disloyalty. Just as the raison d'être
of the radical American Left is anti-Americanism, that of the radical
Israeli Left is anti-Zionism. Not only are such radicals not disturbed
by the widespread disloyalty of Israeli Arabs, one suspects this is
the only basis for their knee-jerk endorsement of the demands made by
those Arabs.

Israeli leftists increasingly identify with the enemies of their own
country on virtually every issue. These folks would not have any
difficulty at all in swearing a pledge of loyalty to the Palestinian
Authority.

2. At least he can now teach politics at Ben Gurion University:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3973533,00.html

3. The leftist March of Folly:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3973228,00.html

Leftist march of folly

Op-ed: Annual Rabin commemoration shuns rightists who oppose both
murder and Oslo
Ron Breiman

For the 15th time we’ve reached the waiting period between the Rabin
memorial days (in line with the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars,) and
it’s as though nothing has changed: Again we are seeing incitement
against half the nation, which is pained by and rejects the murder yet
justifiably continues to show reservations over Rabin’s political way.

The commemoration events got underway in a dignified manner with the
official memorial day, and will hit their undignified peak in a
protest (that is not an official government rally!) held by the Left
(radical and otherwise) at the Rabin Square.

Truth be told, Rabin himself started to sober up and show reservations
over the Oslo way towards the end of his life, understanding the kind
of trap he was leading and was led into. The skepticism displayed by
the prime minister provoked concern both among those who led him on
this path, as well as among the general public.

Public opinion polls commissioned before the assassination predicted a
Netanyahu victory over Rabin in the 1996 elections, an indication that
the public started to understand that the “victims of peace” are not
leading to peace, and that there is no connection between Oslo and
peace; the predictable Oslo war only proved the righteousness of those
who sounded the alarm starting in 1993.

Against this backdrop, it is easy to understand the ongoing decline in
the number of participants in events held to mark a non-existent
legacy. Rabin was not a man of letters and did not leave a moral mark.
The “Rabin Legacy” slogan was invented in retrospect by “men of
letters” and PR experts, in order to appropriate the man’s name and
tragic death for the purpose of promoting his erroneous way.

The media continue to be enlisted to the cause of the Oslo march of
folly, and continue to disparage and reprimand anyone who questions
the false “legacy.”

One of the peaks was a film aired the other night by Channel 10,
consisting of incitement against the pioneer-religious-settler
community, which questions the official version of the assassination’s
circumstances.

Yet one need not be religious or a settler in order to notice the
contradictions and many mysteries associated with that terrible
evening, and one need not be religious or a settler in order to
understand that in order to disprove the stubborn rumors once and for
all, the Shamgar Report as well as the x-rays that show Rabin’s
gunshot wounds must be fully published.

As long as these trust-building measures are not taken, and as long as
yet another official commission of inquiry is not appointed to look
into the murder, the skepticism shall persist, as well as the
incitement against those who do not toe the party line.

Murder didn’t kill democracy
I am neither religious nor a settler; rather, I am a secular Jew who
since the Six-Day War had been living in the Ramat Aviv settlement,
built on the ruins of Arab village Sheikh Munis. I am familiar with
hundreds of secular rightists who hold doubts as to the official
version of the assassination. Each one of my acquaintances also knows
hundreds of skeptics, totaling tens of thousands of people on both
sides of the “Green Line.”

The repeated incitement against the religious-settler community merely
boosts the skepticism among all those who are pained by the murder but
attach great importance to knowing the truth.

In this context, it is important to contradict the prevalent, false
declaration that the assassination curbed the Oslo “peace process” and
brought Netanyahu to power in 1996. After all, public opinion polls on
the eve of the murder predicted a Netanyahu victory in any case. The
assassination’s political outcome was Shimon Peres’ rise to power and
the decision to bring forward the 1996 elections in order to elicit
electoral gains from the murder.

On the ground, the assassination’s outcome was the rash continuation
of the failed process, and the opportunistic handover of Judea and
Samaria towns to the Palestinian occupation army led by arch-terrorist
Yasser Arafat. It was only the buses blown up by Hamas in the winter
of 1996 that terminated Peres’ government.

In this context, it is also important to disprove the ridiculous
declaration that the murderer’s bullets killed democracy as well. The
murder deserves every condemnation, yet the damage to democracy had to
do with the dubious political moves utilized by Rabin to secure the
Oslo agreement’s approval, as well as the means used by Sharon in
order to approve the ethnic, racist cleansing of Jews from homes in
their own country, as the fascistic Left cheered on.

When it comes to Jews, the values of morality and human rights
completely disappear. The kind of “peace” premised on this starting
point is not peace, is not Jewish, is not democratic, is not moral,
and is not Zionistic. As opposed to the fascistic Left, I believe that
no one should be expelled from his home in his country, whether one is
Jewish or Arab.

The Rabin assassination anniversary can be marked in a dignified
manner if this is done in the context of the man and his entire life,
yet not if this requires identification with the flawed political path
he took towards the end of his life. As long as the memorial ceremony
takes the form of a zealously impassioned leftist rally, there is no
reason for those who disagreed with Rabin’s way to take part in it.

4. Liberal Theology: http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/45671

5. Murdoch on War against the Jews:
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/45675

6. Recovering leftist: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/140221

7. Feminazis for Palestine:
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/10/20/the-palestinianization-of-feminism-in-montreal/