The 90`s

"In Perspective" 

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Written June 10th, 1994

On June 5th, appropriately enough, the anniversary of 1967's Six Day War, The New York Times magazine ran an article on the effects of smoking the dried venom of Bufo alvarius, or the Colorado River toad.  In The Time article, the author, Larry Gallagher, describes the experience as one in which the mind is completely disconnected from the body, consciousness itself is unsuspended and all sense of self, space, time and reason are quite literally blown-away for a mind-numbing number of minutes.

A frog, when kissed by a beautiful princess, so the fairy tale goes, will turn magically into a prince.  Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you if you smoke enough toad or have kissed enough frogs. If you were to kiss the Colorado River toad, you would probably die from the venom coating its body.  Likewise, the smooching of Yasir Arafat and Hafez Asad by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres can only be attributed to some blinding mind-altering substance -- the effects are causing a communal loss of consciousness, a vacuousness and detachment from reality so severe that we as a people are running around kissing poisonous frogs in the hope they’ll turn into dashing, romantic princes and rescue us from the doldrums of having to be vigilant about our security. 

Among the great fairy tales of the month are the proposed magic transformation of the remaining billions from the hard-fought $10 billion loan guarantee package, which was to be spent on Soviet immigrants.  Now, according to a member of the House Banking Committee, Israel wants to divert this money from immigration and absorption to compensation for Golan residents when they are forced to leave their homes and farms.  This is an injustice to the immigrants, who still need massive help and a fraud on both the American taxpayer and American Jewry.

More tales from the Brothers Grimm?  The Rabin government is looking for five to eight billion to pay for high-tech monitoring devices for the Golan.  While Israel releases 2,000 Palestinian prisoners (with another 3,000 to go) the government now taps the phones of top Jewish leaders on the golan and in Judea and Samaria.  While terrorists are released, 50 Jews are killed and plenty more wounded in what the government candidly admits is an indefinite wave of terror.

Everything Midas touched turned to gold.  Leprechauns have their pots of gold. The PLO has successfully conned the world into believing it is broke and so will receive $2.4 billion over the next two years (a half billion from you and me, via Uncle Sam) to help run the new autonomy.  No one wants to hear about the eight to 10 billion dollars in assets owned by the PLO, or the $1.5 to $2 billion in annual income that throws off, or that the PLO is so flush it's hired Morgan Stanley to run its portfolio. Stories of PLO poverty are as mendacious as those yarns spun by subway beggars, many of whom net more cash daily than you or I. 

Sleeping beauty of humpty dumpty?  Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin has a plan to carve-up Jerusalem into autonomous zones, with big parts going to the Arabs -- and hey, don't forget, Jerusalem Arabs get to vote in Palestinian elections. 

Green eggs and Ham: virtually every Israeli public opinion poll shows clear opposition to a Golan pull-out and that most Israelis are far more cynical about the prospects for peace than their leaders are.  On Charlie Rose, Peres said that "it's not important what the people think, it's only important what the leaders think" and in the papers he added, "the government needs to do the right thing, even if its not popular."

Reality check:  Those of us who aren't infatuated with frogs, dreams of princes, utopia or the Nobel Prize know that these guys are putting all the chips on one number on the roulette wheel hoping for a jackpot.  Hey, gambling to excess is a disease. What they don't realize is tht when you have the chips already -- independence and secure borders -- you've got the big payoff, and although far less glamorous, is the stuff longevity is made of.

We need to tell our own tales to our elected representatives -- sober tales about no U.S. troops on the Golan, no air to the PLO, no more diverted to pay for a Golan pull-out.  This stuff sound familiar? Some of what we're saying is as old as Ezekiel's bones. Begin kept the faith for 30 years in opposition. Margaret Thatcher, a real princess in my book, says that "of course it’s the same old story.  Truth usually is the same old story."

The 90`s

IDF Stands between us & the next Holocaust

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of March 23rd - March 29th, 1994

The Israeli Army is under attack.  The media is launching a full-scale asault on the intergrity of the Israeli Defense forces in the wake of the Hebron massacre.  Israel's judicial panel of inquiry into the massacre has been interviewing many of the army commanders in the area in an attempt to get at the bottom of things.  (Boy, would I love to see a PLO or Hamas inquiry into the weekly killing of Jewish civilians!) as part of this process, it has come to light that, surprise, surprise, the army does not view Jews as the enemy and has standing orders not to shoot Jews.

The media, CNN and The New York Times at the fore have been reporting this issue as thuough it were the New York City Police Department discriminating against blacks or Hispanics.  The media's implication is that the army is not conducting itself in an unbiased manner and this in and of itself is a crime. Major General Shaul Mofaz testified before the panel that "we protect Jews because the record shows that they are attacked by Arabs.  The Jews are under a far greater and more significant threat than the Arabs, that is why the main effort is at safeguarding Jews.: General Mofaz added that there were no provisions for Jewish terrorism because there just hasn't ever been until two weeks ago.

The media has been quite indignant over the standing order not to kill or shoot Jews.  This policy originated with now-deceased Major General Nehemia Tamari, former chief of the army's Central command, who said "we don't shoot at Jews, they are not the enemy."  This means that in demonstrations and the like, there is no shooting at Jews. Since Arabs get shot and killed in clashes with soldiers all the time, the media feels the army is being biased.

This is true.  People forget that the purpose of the Israeli army to protect Israelis - meaning Jews and protecting the Jewish people is something the IDF does extremely well.  They not only protect Israel, but their umbrella extends over the entire Jewish people everywhere.

Why does the IDF kill Arabs?  Because Arabs take to the streets with guns, knives and rocks with the specific intent of killing soldiers and civilians.  Were the Arabs to stage non-violent demonstrations, they would not be shot. If armed, offensive rioting were to take place in New York, Miami or Los Angeles ad if life and property were endangered, would our police and national guard do any less to protect themselves and enforce law and order?

With all the talk about major territorial concessions to the PLO, who is to ensure Israel's security if not the PDF? Can the IDF functions at full efficiency if its mission is questioned by other Jews, if there is not 100 percent unequivocal support for the IDF and if the IDF is not publicly defended by Jews everywhere? Support for the IDF is critical because it is only the Israeli solider that stands between us and the next Holocaust.  Protecting Jews, marching under the fluttering Star of David is the IDF's reason for existence.

Who is the IDF protecting us against?  The harbingers of hate such as the folks postering Hebron with lines like these: "We will kill every Jew until not a single one of them remains on the face of our land" and "God bless those who are martyed resisting the Jews."

More?  Here's the local Fatah (PLO) chapter in the West Bank:  "We will strike them [the Jews] everywhere until we've destroyed them."  Abu al-Abed of Gaza says that "every young man now has a duty to get himself a gun and shoot Israelis."

Or here's Yasir Arafat on the Voice of Palestine radio restating his demand for "Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied territories, at the forefront of which is Holy Jerusalem, the capital city of our independent state."  Or how about our friends in Hammas (who now enjoy majority of popular support among Palestinian Arabs) who've issued an ultimatum for Jews in the territories to beware the Ides of March. Hamas has earmarked March 15th as the deadline for Jews in Kiryat Arba, Kedumim, Tekoa, Ariel and Gush Katif to flee from their homes or be attacked.  "Settlers must hurry to run away from their settlements by March 15, 1994 because we will not let them know the taste of sleep. Orders have been given to our living martyrs for a five-stage series of attacks" and that "each stage will cause the Israeli people and the settler's to cry for the blood of their dead."  

Asked if Hamas would stop its violence if there were a full Israeli withdrawal from the territories, Hamas spokesman Ibrahim Ghosheh in a Jordanian newspaper said "the holy war will not cease, because the Jews would then continue to exist in other parts of Palestine."  Ghosheh restated his organization's goal: driving all Jews out of Israel, which would be replaced by an Islamic state.

Head of IDF intelligence, Major General Uri Saguy, testifying before the Israeli Cabinet, said that the "strategic goal of the Palestinians seems to be the establishment of an independent state" and that "Palestine statements on a confederation with Jordan are a tool aimed at attaining a state, since they believe the confederation formula is easier for Israel and the West to digest.

Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu asserts that a PLO state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza will overwhelm and take over the East Bank - Jordan - and that this new radical state will be four times the size of Israel on both banks of the Jordan and that Hamas rule of this state would not be far off.

The Arabs are enraged about Hebron.  But they are and have been enraged about Jews living anywhere in the Land of Israel.  They've been enraged long before there even was an Israel. To the media Arab rage is a pure, noble and understandable phenomenon, because if they're enraged, they must be aggrieved and if they're aggrieved their grievances must be legitimate.  Therefore to assuage and appease this rage, Jews must die and Jews must acquiesce, no matter if the roots of this rage is the evil bile of race hatred and Anti-Semitism, because to paraphrase Paul Newman as Ari Ben-Canaan in Exodus, "Jewish blood is cheap, lady, it's cheaper than herring."  The only institution upping the ante on Jewish blood and Jewish life is the Israel Defense Forces and I, for one, am extremely happy that their prime directive is to protect Jews.

The 90`s

If racism occurred at a 'white' college...

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of April 27th- May 3rd, 1994

There's a whole lot of braying emanating from the "hallowed halls" of Howard University, that august institution of higher learning that has been self-described as "the black Harvard."

Weak-kneed university administrators, hiding under the supposed shield of the First Amendment have been tolerating a virtual hate-fest on their campus this year. On this campus is an organization called "Unity Nation" that has been responsible for all kinds of anti-Semitic utterings at various rallies throughout the year.

This past Tuesday, "Unity Nation" held another rally.  Among the "distinguished" guests at this suspicious occasion were Khalid Muhammed of the Nation of Islam who spouted off the following "truths" (Farrakhan's word) at Kean College recently:

"Who are the slumlords in the black community...Who is sucking our blood in the black community? The so-called Jew."  "The Federal Reserve ain't really owned by the Federal Government...it's owned by the Jews." "They are the most influential in newspaper, magazine, print media and electronic media.  They have our entertainers in their hip pocket...they have our athletes in the palm of their hands." "Brother, I don't care who sits in the seat at the White House. You can believe that the Jews control that seat...they control the finance, and no only that, they influence the policy-making."  And so on and so on and so on...

Also at this H.U. rally was the esteemed Dr. Leonard Jeffries, head of Black Studies at CCNY, that noted scholar who keeps espousing the canard that the Jews were responsible for the slave trade along with the Jews' running a conspiracy against blacks, among other things.  Also at the rally was the student agitator Malik Zulu Shabazz, specialist at anti-Semitic jingoism and rabble-rousing, now training in the minor leagues of campus life before the hits the big-time when he graduates.

No one, especially those of the "politically correct" are particularly upset about this university's providing a forum for the purveyors of hatred.  Erstwhile New York gubernatorial candidate Howard Stern, sometimes called the "shock jock" for his sometimes sophomoric monologues on his nationwide radio show, is also known for succinctly tapping into the truth. Talking about this very subject on his show recently, Stern asserted that "if a white university starte behaving in this fashion, there would be a, when I say white university, I mean typically white institution, all hell would break loose in this country."

Meanwhile, in Chicago, Louis Farrakhan says there is a "Jewish media conspiracy to destroy him" and he asks, "Why is that we can see a Schindler's List but there is nothing that is said of the holocaust to black people, which was 100 times worse than the Holocaust of the Jews?

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) obviously sees its advancement taking place by associating with Farrakhan and his ilk.  As quoted recently in The New York Times, the NAACP board said that its leaders who resist any pressure to distance itself from Mr. Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.  Benjamin F. Chavis, executive director of the NAACP, has called for closer ties with the Nation of Islam and among Chavis' close advisors are a longtime attorney of Farrakhan's and a former official of the Marxist government of Grenada.

Meanwhile, that prince of pomposity, the Reverend Al Sharpton is running for U.S. Senate against the venerable Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  In his quest for the holy grail - political power - he has accepted the political endorsement of none other than Louis Farrakhan. In explaining this, Sharpton declares that "I will accept all organizations that have been positive in our community, including the Nation of Islam."  In further rationalizing of his Farrakhan support, Sharpton asserts that "You (the Jews) cannot chose the leadership on the other side of the table. We must respect indigenous leaders in each community."

Colin Ferguson is the black guy who killed six and wounded 25 others on the 5:33 Long Island Rail Road train to Hicksville a little while back.  His defense in court? Why, "black rage" of course. American (read white) racism drove Ferguson insane. He was victimized by white society and was compelled to act.  His defense attorneys? None other than Willian Kunstler, the self-hating Jew (he also defended Kahane's and Yankel Rosenbaum's killers) and Ronald Kuby, a refugee from the radical 60's.  Kuby has been very candid in his defense of "black rage." He really says in New York Magazine that "the more the white community fears African-Americans, the better." He also goes on to say that "We're just saying that he (Ferguson) was not responsible for his own conduct.  We're saying white racism is to blame."

A 1992 survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that blacks are more than twice as likely as non-Jewish white to hold negatively stereotypical views of Jews.  In New York, black radio stations like WLIB and WWRL rant on all day against the Jews as does much of the black print media.

Howard Stern his it on the head again: "You know what I've got to laugh about all this, because, first of all, it, it's amazing to me who a black guy, who is sitting there in bad economic times, sitting there trying to figure out what his problem is in life, why he's not succeeding and if I took two hours of my time to hear somebody speak, who was gonna (sic) give me the answer about why my life was so miserable, and he (the speaker) got up there and he said:  The reason you're so miserable is the Jews, I'd punch him out."

When 11 members of Congress, black guys, are not willing to denounce Louis Farrakhan when you have a situation where black universities will not denounce...you've got to understand something.  If there is a wave of acceptance of this stuff, and you have to feel bad about it, because you sit there, and you look at how most of white America must love this, watching the Jews and the blacks fighting, it's a great comedy.  The two most hated groups on Earth, scrapping with each other...because there's some powerful, white WASP sitting there, somewhere, going, 'those dopes.'"

The people ultimately damaged in all this are the blacks because anti-Semitism won't further their economic situation, it won't engender friendlier relations with the rest of America, it won't help their quest for better education and housing, and it just won't win friends or influence people.  It will only serve to further ghettoize them and retard the efforts of many to join the mainstream of American society.

What about the Jews?  Why should we care? Are we being too sensitive?  The answer is best encapsulated in the following snippet of conversation from the new film, The Paper, between Michael Keaton and Randy Quaid.  Keaton asks Quaid, "When did you become so paranoid?: Quaid answers, "When they started going after me." As for the Jews, we must continue to expose these bigots so as to discredit them further and to keep vigilant should mere hateful rhetoric transform itself into more large-scale vandalism or violence against American Jews as was the case in Crown Heights and at the Brooklyn Bridge.  We must defend ourselves in every way and at every sphere against attacks either verbal or physical so it is made abundantly clear and sundry that the Jew of 1994 is not the Jew of 1934. We will not be maligned, we will not be abused and we will not be attacked. Anti-Semitism may be in vogue in some circles, but for us, the truth never goes out of style. We must continue to educate the public so bigotry is kept on the run and so as not to give satisfaction to the David Dukes and KKKers out in the hinterlands.

The 90`s

So-called progessives buy Arab bigotry

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of April 13th - April 19th, 1994

There is now going to be  a "Temporary International Presence" in Hebron (TIPH) and this doesn’t officially include the Reverend Jesse Jackson who's traveling there this week.

The Israeli government has acquiesced to the PLO's demand for international observers in Hebron in the wake of the massacre in the Tomb of the Patriarchs.  This adds an extra helping of vigorish to the already existing accords with the PLO. Arafat, as you may recall has been both petulant and indigent about returning to the bargaining table for the past month, so here comes the Peres Patrol galloping at a fast grovel to accommodate the willy PLO chief.

The Israelis have agreed to allow 160 field observers and their support staff from Norway, Denmark and Italy.  They won't have police functions, rather, their mandate will be "to promote stability and enhance the well-being of Jews in Hebron or anywhere else.  This decision to allow an international presence has grave ramifications in that it establishes the principle that Israel is solely an occupying power and has no inherent claims or rights to the area.

Media accounts have taken as given truths Arabs assertions that Jews living in Hebron and Jews living with Arabs in general as being "provocative", "explosive", "incendiary" and the like.  Many breast-beating Jews have also taken up the same mantra. What is this provocation? What makes things "explosive"? Why, the very fact that the Jews have the unmitigated chutzpah to want to live in Hebron at all!  What nerve the Jews have in violating the sanctity of the Arab patrimony by soiling it with the presence of the vile, infidel Jews -- Jews who won't allow themselves to be persecuted, to the religious traditions that consider Hebron to be Judaism's second-holiest site and who won't abandon the holy graves of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Lead and Rebecca.

It never ceases to amaze me how so-called progressives can buy into the lard of logic that ennobles and enshrines what is, to put it bluntly, Arab anti-Semitism, bigotry and intolerance of Jews.  Real liberalism in my view is living peacefully with one another, with respect for each other's beliefs and differences, but you really can't sell that to many Arabs in Hebron or to the factotums at PLO headquarters in Tunis.   If the mere fact of Jews living next-door or in the same neighborhood as non-Jews were described as non-desirable, "explosive," or "provocative" in Boise, Boynton Beach, Bel-Air or Brooklyn, we all know that these same breast-beaters would ne up-in-arms over the injustice of it all.

If a synagogue were vandalized in Hebron, Pennsylvania, Jews killed by the KKK and Jews barred from every returning to worship in that synagogue what would your reaction be?   Would you tolerate such blatant discrimination? Why should the original Hebron and our holy Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs be any different?

Meanwhile, in the Knesset, Likud Party Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that "if anyone would attempt to uproot Jews from Hebron, all the people of Israel would come to protect the rights of Jews to live in the city of our forefather"  Member of Knesset Ariel Sharon, quoted in Yediot Aharonot called for "wide-spread, non-violent popular resistance" should the government decide to remove Jews from Hebron. Sharon called on the Israeli public to go to Hebron and use non-violent means to prevents the removal of Jews and asserted that "I will be there myself."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the United States has just pledged $6,000,000.00 worth of police equipment for the upcoming Palestinian Police.  Your tax dollars at work. The Russians have been asking to be a part of any multi-national force in the territories and have been sending their Mid-East envoy, Victor Posuvalyuk to parley with Arafat quite regularly, in fact, five times over the past two weeks.  The Russians have not ceased their arms sales to the likes of Syria's Assad and Libya's Khadaffi and would no doubt like to be one of the godfathers for a Palestinian State. But why should anyone be nervous about this?

Real peace cannot come about by restricting Jews from their holy places.  It can't come about by tolerating anti-Semitism from any source and that includes anti-Semitism directed at the Orthodox by elements of secular Jews or the vilification of patriotic Jews living in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan by people who may be more concerned with political expedience's, with inking a deal before the 1996 elections that with the long-term viability of ou rights and claims to all the Land of Israel.  There is a saying that before we agree to give anything back we first consult with two people, our grandfathers who are no longer alive and our grandchildren who are not yet born, because these decisions effect the continuum of Jewish existence, not just ourselves today.

The 90`s

Musings, Ruminations and Observations

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of February 9th - February 15th, 1994

My favorite editor, Andrew Polic, (who is actually a pretty nice guy, but don't let that get around too much, he'll think I'm getting soft) cut-out a nice chunk of my last column, which, takes me comments and assertions about the Palestinian Arabs out-of-perspective.  So, here are the deleted portions:

I wrote about equating the reestablishment of the state of Israel with the Reconquista of Spain by the Spanish.  Here are the missing parts; "Much as the Spaniards of old were driven out by the invading Moors, so, too were Jewish hopes dashed in the middle of the seventh century by the Moslem Conquest and their successor regimes - but no matter who controlled the area, no one was able to eradicate the Jewish presence from the land.  There are seven some Galilean villages that survived intact from Second Temples times to this very day. We must stress again and again that we are not the alien presence in the land."

"Nineteenth Century accounts, too numerous to mention, clearly describe a Palestine that was virtually devoid of habitation and vegetation.   The majority of Palestinian Arabs are a pastiche of peoples, fused together from the flotsam and jetsam of the defunct Ottoman Empire and other Arabs who streamed into the country as a result of Jewish redevelopment and its concurrent creation of economic opportunity, much as Mexicans stream across the Rio Grande today.  Some others were brought in by the Ottomans - notably from the Caucasus region and from Egypt in an attempt to colonize Palestine."

The state of Palestine at the turn of the century was exactly as described in the Torah and the prophets - striking in its desolation and devastation, just as the holy writings said it would be without her people - the Jewish people.  Likewise, the re-blooming of the land is also as Scripture foretells along with the in-gathering of the Jewish people from "the four corners of the earth."

The gist of my last column was that we are the indigenous people of Israel.  The current peace process makes me nostalgic for the Labor party of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan.  Meir was emphatic that there was no such thing as a "Palestinian people" and that they were a no-people from no-place.  Right-wing Labor Party Knesset Member Ra'anan Cohen said in The Jerusalem Report that his party "has been hijacked by history and by the doves" and that "the country as a whole seems to have gone crazy."

Strange Intersections

There is a corner in downtown Ramat Gun (the number two municipality in the "Big Orange" Greater Tel Aviv metroplex) where Ben Gurion Avenue and Jabolinsky Street meet,  These are two men who were at loggerheads over the destiny of the Jewish people for decades. Ben Gurion represented unrepentant agrarian-nased labor socialism, Havlagah (restraint) regarding retaliation against Arab terror and accommodation with the British occupiers.

Jabotinsky represented free-market urbanized capitalism with swift and harsh retaliation against Arab terror and independence from the British yesterday, not tomrrow.

That intersection is more than a fluke and more than a metaphor.  Today's peace and appeasement madness among many of the Israeli masses has been made possible by a synthesis of many Laborite security/territorial/secular ideologies and those of capitalism and urbanization represented by the Likud.  In fact, it is a perverse reality that the booming Israeli economy, made possible by the foundation left by 15 years of Likud economic reforms has turned many an Israeli into Gordon Gecko (from the movie Wall Street.)

The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange had $43 billion in turnover in 1993, up 55 percent over 1992.  More than 1,140 issues were traded, up from 777 in 1992. Some share prices were up by 1,400 percent.  Real Estate stocks were up 60 percent and assessed real estate values were up 60 percent and assessed real estate values were up 20 percent.  Israel is one of the only nations without a capital gains tax on profits derived from the stock market.

A new breed of Israeli has been born who is probably belongs to neither Labor or Likud.  This can best be seen by a story a friend of mine relates. While visiting Israel last month, meeting with bankers in Tel Aviv, the subject of the Golan came up.  The bankers all said, to the amazement of their visitor, "don't worry, if Rabin gives-back the Golan the stock market will go up by 50 percent." This friend of mine observes that this new Israeli believes in defense by means of a wall of stock certificates.  So protected does this new Israeli feel ensconced in his office towers and in front of his computer screens that he often can't see the forest for the trees.

This new Israeli is a Likudnik in economic terms (you can't sell socialism to him) but a Laborite on security/territorial issues.  It's no wonder leaders of both parties are mystified.

The Man From Haagen Dazs

Reuben Mattus passed away this week.  Known primarily as the creative genius behind Haagen Dazs ice cream, it is lesser-know that for decades now he was a principle benefactor for many, many right-of-center Jewish and Zionist organizations.  A great number of groups came to depend on Mattus' generosity for significant percentages of their budgets. It is fair to say that through his charitable proclivities Reuben Mattus had a big impact on Israel and the Jewish world today.  He was the Reichmann of ice cream, his help was greatly appreciated and he will be sorely missed. 

The Funny Papers

The New York Jewish Week has been running a spate of articles and columns lately that have been overtly disparaging to the Likud.  Among them was Ina Friedman's piece on Jan. 14 pretending and prognosticating the demise of the Likud (a tad premature given our stunning election victories in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Beersheva and Eilat) and James D. Besser's column the next week decrying the penchant of Likud Members of Knesset visiting with their friends on Capitol Hill and lobbying American and Jewish public opinion against the Rabin-Arafat pact.  Besser further grouses (in the name of unnamed "Israeli officials") about Likud's successful fund raising in this country "that will be used in the effort to topple the Rabin government."

Besser and The Jewish Week both show no context and are disingenous because that fail to mention Shimon Peres' weekly jaunts to Washington while opposition leader and his efforts to topple the Shamir government and further fails to make mention of Labor's successful fund raising here both in the past and today which equals or exceeds that raised by the Likud people. 

It's All in the Numbers

It's what I've been saying all along, finally confirmed by official Israeli statistics: More Jews have died in tragic accidents in Israel than have died in all of Israel's war.  There were 17,700 soldiers who have fallen in the line of duty and 20,000 killed on-the-roads in traffic accidents. By the way, still, fewer Jews have died in all of Israel's wars than died in one day at Auschwitz.

 Now Playing

Finally, here is a shameless plug, the kind you'd see from a guest on Late Night with David Letterman: I'm going to be on TV on Sunday, Feb. 13, hosting a special program about Judea and Samaria.  In Manhattan, I'll be on Zev Brenner's Talkline Network, Channel 65  at 3:30 p.m. and again at 8 p.m. on Channel 34.  In South Florida, I'll be on JFTV at 6 p.m.

If you've always wanted to see me live, this is your chance.