Questions: Quick. On which Israeli national holiday did Ophir Pines resign from politics?
Answer: Any day in which Ophir Pines resigns from politics is an Israeli national holiday!
Ophir Pines is a politician whom I really love to hate. He is an obnoxious leftist McCarthyist. He led the Labor Party’s campaign against freedom of speech for anti-Oslo dissidents. After Rabin’s assassination, Pines led each and every Labor Party attempt to indict members of the political opposition for supposedly being collectively guilty of Rabin’s death, and he led the camp claiming that exercise of freedom of speech by Right-wingers was what ultimately produced the Rabin assassination. He repeatedly filed court petitions against Righists expressing opinions.
Pines was considered until yesterday, when he resigned from the Knesset, to be the up-and-coming Young Turk, the Bonnie Prince Churly, and next-generation-leader of the Labor Party. He had come in at the very top of Labor Party internal primaries. This – in spite of his total absence of charisma and his lack of any sense of humor. Pines looks like a young Montgomery Burns, and has yet to be seen cracking a smile.
“Pines” is actually a common name for German Jews. It is however pronounced in German and Hebrew, and I kid you not about this, “Penis.” Some members of the clan spell the name as it sounds, making their peace with the jokes. Others, including young Ophir, prefer the PG spelling – PINES. In any case, his name is pronounced Offer Penis, and for many years I respond to anyone mentioning his name with, “Sure, just not my own.” Wouldn’t it be cool if he had married a woman named Fanny Prostate?
So just what induced Prince Penis to abandon the Labor Party? I think the answer is pretty clear. Rodents never stay aboard sinking ships. The Labor Party has sunk from a hegemonic single-party ruling class, running the state all on its own, to squeezing into the last Knesset as the 4th largest power. It is possibly about to split into two even smaller splinters.
The Labor Party has very simply been completely wrong about nearly every single matter on which it has taken a public stand. First and foremost, of course, the Labor Party bears direct responsibility for the Oslo debacle and all the existential damage it has done to the Jewish people. Pines completely supports all of that, but he can see that the Labor shiplet is a-sinkin. Read more >