The man who funneled $25,000 apiece to the families of suicide bombers was caught like a snake in a hole. Question for President Bush: But why then do you treat Yasser Arafat, the man who funnels money to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, as a partner for peace? Why are you contributing, along with the EU, Japan and others, another $1.2 billion to the Palestinian Authority when you must know that much of what does not line the pockets of PA officials will go to fund terror?
Frequent Outpost contributor Steven Plaut is currently the defendant in Israel's own David Irving trial. Irving, it will be remembered, sued Prof. Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher, in England, for writing what the court would find were simply statements of fact: namely that Irving was a Nazi apologist and Holocaust denier who had manipulated documents to "prove" there had been no genocide of Jews during World War II. Prof. Plaut is being sued for libel, in Israel, by one Prof. Neve Gordon, who teaches political science (to that institution's disgrace) at Ben-Gurion University, and whose writings are cited on Irving's website as they are on a number of neo-Nazi, Arab and Holocaust denial websites.
While Gordon argues that he did not put his articles on these sites, the fact that his writings appeal to those who did tells volumes about their content. Plaut points out that Gordon -- although not an M.D. -- used to head Physicians for Human Rights, a pro-Arab organization so extreme it was publicly denounced by the Israel Medical Association. Gordon, Plaut has revealed, has repeatedly called Israel a "fascist" state engaging in "state terrorism," and has not only described Sharon and Netanyahu as "war criminals" but also arch-dove former Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Gordon was also one of the signers of a petition before the recent Iraq war which declared Israel was planning to maltreat the Arab population once the war broke out.
Plaut has told how after the Passover massacre of 2002 in Netanya, Gordon was among the group who illegally infiltrated army lines and entered Arafat's Ramallah headquarters to prevent the arrest of terrorists holed up there.
Gordon has praised the writings of the notorious Norman Finkelstein, whose output is so egregious that, Plaut notes, he is the neo-Nazis' pet "Jewish historian."
There is much, much more in Gordon's hate-filled resume. However, while Gordon feels entitled to freely express the most extreme, fanatic sentiments, he does not believe Plaut is entitled to express his own views on them, and is using the courts in an attempt to silence criticism. Gordon's suit in the Israeli courts is no more likely to succeed than Irving's appeal to the British courts, but it has major nuisance value, putting Plaut to the ex- pense and travail of a trial.
Meanwhile, readers are encouraged to write to Professor Avishai Braverman, President of Ben-Gurion University and/or Friends of Ben-Gurion University, 1430 Broadway, N.Y., N.Y. 10018 and say what they think of Gordon and his lawsuit.
A week after PA national security advisor Jibril Rajoub said that Arafat backed the so-called "Geneva Understandings" (Rajoub represented Arafat at the ceremony to launch the much-touted initiative), he declared that Arafat never accepted or endorsed them. What happened?
It seems clear that Arafat did in fact approve every word of the Geneva document, which succeeded brilliantly in its purpose of further isolating the Israeli government (even President Bush praised it). Why then repudiate it? Because there were widespread hostile demonstrations against the Geneva agreement in PA controlled territory. Arafat and Co. have so raised the level of hatred -- and expectations -- among Palestinian Arabs that any agreement that can be interpreted as bestowing any shred of legitimacy on Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is anathema. Yossi Beilin attempted to sell the package to the Israeli public by saying there had been Arab concessions on the right to return: hearing this, the Arab street erupted in rage. And so Rajoub reassured the population: "There is no phrase that calls for dropping the right of return."
So much for the Geneva Accord. It is already clear that the Israeli convenors and the Arab ones have different understandings of the "Understandings."
"Although Labor and the Likud differ in their views on the Palestinian question, we both oppose in the strongest terms the creation of a Palestinian 'mini-state' in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, first and foremost because it cannot solve anything." (The Rabin Memoirs, p.334)
Outpost - 2 - January 2004