Rael Jean Isaac

A FALSE FAITH

A widely held misconception, in earlier years the central theme of the Anti-Defamation League's publicity campaigns, is that education promotes tolerance. This false notion accounts for the special shock when organizations of professors engage in intellectually and morally ludicrous attacks on Israel, a notable recent example being the "boycotts" (which have fizzled) by both major English associations of academics.

In fact universities in the twentieth century have been in the forefront of fomenting hatred. In A Concise History of the Third Reich, Wolfgang Benz reports that within mere weeks of Hitler's assumption of power (on May 10, 1933) students in every university town, with the active participation of administration and professors, held the famous "bonfire celebrations" (book burnings), assigning the works of many of Germany's chief writers to the flames. A bitter Victor Klemperer, himself a born-Jewish professor forced out of his job (but who survived the war in Germany thanks to his Protestant wife) recorded in his diary: "If one day the situation were reversed and the fate of the vanquished lay in my hands, then I would let all the ordinary folk go...but I would have all the intellectuals strung up, and the professors three feet higher than the rest; they would be left hanging from the lamp posts for as long as was compatible with hygiene."

FROM THE NATIONAL FOOL

In Kazakhstan, as the Hamas government was raining rockets into Israel and reaffirming its determination to exterminate the Jewish state, vice premier Shimon Peres announced that peace with the Palestinian Arabs was closer than ever. "The distance between us is the shortest it's been for the last fifty years" he declared. He was almost equally optimistic that Iran would abandon "religion" for "development." "Their choice is to keep the country poor and their arsenal rich. The speeches are very impressive, but the reality is very depressive."
It is hard to think of anything more "depressive" than this ever more puffed-up national hot-air balloon continuing to function at the highest level of Israel's government.

BY THOSE THEY HONOR

We have many times pointed out in this column that those whom a group, an institution, a government chooses to honor tells you a great deal about those bestowing the honor, their values, priorities and goals -- and many of the prizes Israel has offered in recent years speak volumes of the state's spiritual, political and intellectual decline.

A current case in point: Ben Gurion University in May awarded Andre Azoulay an honorary doctorate. Azoulay is a Moroccan Jew who lives in Rabat and serves as adviser to King Muhammad VI, in whose palace he has an office. Azoulay claims his "fight for Palestinian causes...makes his Judaism stronger." Says Azoulay: "Until the Palestinian people recover their dignity, their freedom, I feel my Judaism is weaker and hurt."

In other words Azoulay serves his Arab master as a convenient Jewish shill for the struggle against Israel. And this makes him a suitable recipient for honor by an Israeli university?

FIGHTING FOR AL QAEDA

While the U.S. labors to provide the "Palestinians" with a state, the "Palestinians" labor on behalf of our enemies. The U.S. military has found that over the last 18 months Palestinian Arabs have become a key element in Al Qaeda groups in Iraq, heading insurgency cells and recruiting university students in Baghdad for suicide car bombings.

Unsurprisingly, the Hamas government deplored the killing of murderer-in-chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, faxing to Reuters a statement in which it mourned him as a "martyr of the nation." The statement said: "With hearts full of faith, Hamas commends brother-fighter Abu Musab...who was martyred at the hands of the savage crusade campaign which targets the Arab homeland, starting in Iraq."

MAO THE UNKNOWN STORY

Perhaps the most interesting revelation in Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's recent book on Mao is that it was not Communism that animated him but a variant of a Nietzschean Superman view of life. They quote his writings as a young man, where he cites the attributes of Great Heroes, among whom he counts himself. "Everything outside their nature, such as restrictions and constraints, must be swept away by the great strength of their nature...When Great Heroes give full play to their impulses, they are magnificently powerful, stormy and invincible. Their power is like a hurricane...there is no way to stop them."

This could equally describe Hitler, Stalin, or more recently Saddam. The only difference between these men is that Stalin and Mao, during their lifetime, won a free pass for the exercise of their impulses from much of the intelligentsia in the Western world on the basis of the supposed "ideals" on which their regimes rested.

While all these men were worshipped by their hypnotized followers, in no case did the level of control - or deification -- rise to the level of Mao's. For example, Jung Chang describes a school textbook holding up as a model a youth who drowns after jumping into a flood to save an electricity pole because the pole would be used to carry the word of Mao.

And in no case did the public reap the whirlwind as it did with China's Great Hero: Mao killed 70 million of his people in fulfilling his "invincible' impulses.