Rael Jean Isaac
 
A GERMAN POLL

Six decades after the murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany, a survey found that 68% of Germans believe Israel is waging a "war of extermination" against the Palestinians and 51% see no difference between Israel's treatment of Palestinian Arabs and what the Nazis did to the Jews. As frequent contributor to Outpost Hugh Fitzgerald points out, "this horrifying statistic" shows just how successful the viciously anti-Israel European media has been in shaping attitudes. “Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism,” notes Fitzgerald, “are deplorable wherever these pathologies are found: in Germany they are -- given history -- absolutely intolerable and unacceptable."

Meanwhile, in our morally topsy turvy world, UN expert Anne Bayefsky reports that in November the UN’s Third Committee defeated a resolution condemning Sudan for mass murder in Darfur while adopting nine resolutions condemning Israel.

THE WALL

We at AFSI are among the few supporters of Israel who have consistently spoken out against "the Wall." From a security point of view, whatever relief it offers will be short term. Terrorists will go around and under it and missiles will sail over it. Its political impact, which is the most serious, is already being felt. Elliot Abrams, director of the National Security Council's Middle East section, told American Jewish leaders: "It's clear to us that in the end the settlements on the other side of the partition will be dismantled." Within Israel, former Herzliya mayor Eli Landau, who is close to Sharon, confirmed that Sharon's plan "would eventually take Israel all the way back to the anti-terrorism partition fence."

The Wall is Sharon's declaration of Israel's intent to return if not precisely to what Abba Eban once called "the Auschwitz borders", to something very close to them.

FOOL AND MESSIAH

His policies, having destroyed his coalition, have impelled Sharon to form a government with Labor including the sempiternal Shimon Peres as a sort of co-Prime Minister. Peres says he joins "to give peace a chance," even though he has a "better peace plan." Asked what that was, he said there was no need, as Sharon proposed, to stop terror and dismantle terror organizations: a better plan was to pursue negotiations regardless of such considerations. Peres has no need to worry. His better plan is sure to be pursued.

Thus Israel descends into farce. It will be half-governed by Shimon Peres, an outright fool. And how to describe co-ruler Sharon? Shmuel Katz offers the best suggestion: "He [Sharon] has accused the people whom he personally helped to settle in Judea and Samaria and Gaza of being “Messianic.” If they are Messianic, what then must he himself be? An ex-Messiah?"

WHOM THE GODS WILL DESTROY

The single useful achievement of Israel's 1980 treaty with Egypt was the provision that Egyptian forces would remain out of the Sinai peninsula. Now, incredibly, Israel has asked that 750 Egyptian troops be deployed along the border with Gaza, supposedly to guard against terrorism. Yet concurrently with this decision, military intelligence, in reports to Israel's General Staff and cabinet, emphasized that Egypt has facilitated the smuggling of weapons and insurgents from Sinai to Gaza. Middle East News Line (MENL) reports the words of a senior military source: "We are not only talking about weapons. We are talking about the infiltration of Egyptian and other trainers to help improve the capabilities of Palestinian terrorist groups and the Palestinian Authority."

ISRAEL'S ACADEMIA MONITOR

Using "Campus Watch" in the United States as a model, a group of academics, students and concerned citizens have created a watchdog group to bring to light statements and articles by radical anti-Zionists in Israeli universities which, as the statement from Israel Academia Monitor puts it, have become platforms "for radical anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic propaganda, often by tenured radicals with embarrassing academic records and dubious research credentials.” While insisting their sedition should be protected as freedom of speech, these radicals "believe that no one else should be permitted to monitor, nor criticize them as part of that same freedom."
For more information, go to http://israel-academic-monitor.com

VENEZUELA

Police officers in Caracas invaded a Jewish school, the Colegio Hebraica, attended by 1500 children. Venezuela state TV had been reporting for days that the Mossad was behind the recent assassination of a prosecutor named Danilo Anderson. In the meantime President Chavez (whose fraud-ridden election was given the kosher stamp by ubiquitous poll-watcher Jimmy Carter) was in Iran denouncing the United States and kissing ayatollahs, even wearing their religious garb. As A.M. Mora y Leon notes on the American Thinker website, the school invasion was a move to intimidate and terrify the Jewish community -- and went after the children, of course.

HEROES OF THE JEWISH UNDERGROUND

Our thanks to Shmuel Ben-Gad of the Gelman Library of George Washington University for calling our attention to Zev Golan's Free Jerusalem: Heroes, Heroines and Rogues Who Created the State of Israel, published by Devora Publishing in New York. The book, notes Ben-Gad, "provides sketches of many members of the pre-state Jewish underground movements....Particularly notable is Mr. Golan's portrait of Avraham Stern, founder of Lechi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) and that of Rabbi Moshe Segal, almost unknown in the Diaspora, yet a very important underground figure. The author also includes those members who were hanged by the British as well as other 'ordinary' fighters who either survived or fell in less publicized circumstances."

SHARON'S LOST CHICKEN SENSE

In the Jerusalem Post (Dec. 9) Sarah Honig zeroes in on how Sharon's policies -- by his own earlier admission -- will destroy Israel. She writes:

"Growing up in Kfar Malal, young Arik astutely observed the chickens on his family's farm. He noted that the hens clucked harmoniously most of the time; but if one took ill, its mates suddenly and ferociously turned on it, pecking, scratching, and clawing their victim to death. It was then the future general concluded that weakness encourages aggression.

“Those who can't defend themselves are terminated viciously. Those who don't deter, invite their own destruction. That's how it is in nature, in the barnyard, in Israeli politics, and in the Mideast.

"When Arik grievously injured the settlers, he must have realized he was turning them into fair game...Confused ordinary folk prefer being among the asaulting fowl rather than associating with pitiful pariah pullets everyone rips into.

"One flock's top hen is another's ravaged prey...By retreating and dismantling veteran villages, he signals the rest of the world that Israel is weakening. He thereby turns Israel into the enfeebled chicken of this savage region and of the heartless world.

"He weakens our moral claim to any part of this land in an international environment where it's already increasingly trendy to dispute Israel's very right to exist.

"He may be intent on dismantling some settlements. Enemies and their overseas sympathizers focus on all settlements, first outside the Green Line and later within.

"Like it or not, Arik, we're all in the same chicken coop."