Truly bizarre. Foreign Policy runs a fluffball feature about Michael Ben-Ari, a Kahanist who was denied a visa to the US because he belongs to an organization deemed terrorist.
Headlines: “The Things They Carried: The Israeli Settler. A peek inside the bag Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari schleps to work each day in Jerusalem.” The piece, reported by Oren Kessler of the Jerusalem Post, describes the contents of Ben-Ari’s bag. Pedometer, Persian food, wallet, tefillin. Oh and a book:
The Hebrew edition of Rabbi Meir Kahane: His Life and Thought — Volume One: 1932-1975, by Kahane’s wife, Libby. Ben-Ari recalls Kahane as a “wise, courageous, and committed” teacher.
No mention of the fact that Ben-Ari has likened Obama to Qaddafyi and Assad. Would Foreign Policy ever seek to humanize a member of Hamas? Would it talk about what he schleps to work?
Stuart Levey, the former under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism, wrote his thesis at Harvard in 1985 on the dangers to Zionism of Kahanism. He said that Israeli racist extremism endangered the “dream” of a Jewish state because it would alienate American liberal Jews. And he was right.
http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/YeshGvul/message/583
In 1988 Ishayahu Leibowitz wrote: “If the status-quo continues (and the keyword is “if”), hooliganization – or perhaps we ought to say Nazification – of the people and society in Israel – will be inevitable”.
I think Tim O’Brien would HATE that the title of his -great- book “the things they carried” would be used in this context
In 70 C.E. (we used to say A.D.) there was a blowout of lawlessness on the part of Jewish “zealots” against the government (The Romans). The revolt was stupid and probably a result of what today we would call fundamentalist crazy-violence.
Today, Jewish “zealots” are lawlessly disobeying international law and international concepts and norms of human rights in their management of the occupied territories. Sadly, the “Romans” of today — the UNGA, the EU, the UNSC, the USA, are distant, diffuse, and disinclined to enforce their own law.
How long will this disinclination continue? The signs are that the over-the-top misbehavior of the Jewish “zealots” (settlers, Bibi, Lieberman, AIPAC, etc.) will only get worst, because it appears that the “zealots” have no “brakes”.
Is the lawlessness of Jewish “zealots” genetic (and is there really a genetically-based Jewish people?) or is it merely (merely!?) social?
i guess anybody can write for the foreign policy blog. what a disappointment.