In The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey plays the part of Keyser Söze, organized crime’s answer to the bogeyman. Years before, when Söze was but a small-time Turkish drug runner, a rival Hungarian gang tried to seize his territory. They broke into his home, raped his wife and killing one of his children. On Keyser’s return, the thugs threatened to kill the rest of his family if he did not yield his territory. Read more >

An abridged version of a longer article about the cover-up scandal at the Hebrew University, with relation to the “Abstaining From Rape of Arabs is Jewish Racism” thesis, came out this evening at the NY Jewish Press under the title Guilty By Reason Of Innocence: New Insanity From Israel’s Academic Leftists By: Steven Plaut and can be read there.

Below is the longer FULL version of the article, which has not yet been published in full length form, but is presented here.

SCOPUSGATE

By Steven Plaut

It began as just another exercise in political academic wackiness at the Hebrew University.

A graduate student claimed that the absence of any history of rapes of Arab women by Israeli Jewish soldiers proves that the Jews are racists and oppressors, people who do not even regard Arab women as sexually desirable. Such silliness is commonplace these days in academia, and ordinarily no one would have taken much notice. But the student at the Mount Scopus campus and her “research” were then awarded a university honor for her impressive “discoveries.” That drew media attention.

The matter has now become the worst recent scandal in Israeli academia because of the attempt by the heads of the Hebrew University to cover it up, in a manner a bit reminiscent of the worst days of Watergate. Maybe it should be dubbed Scopusgate. The scandal now rivals the “Toaff Affair” in Israel last year, in which a now-retired professor at Bar-Ilan University published “research” in which he claimed that medieval Jews used gentile blood for ceremonial purposes.

The very highest officials of the Hebrew University are themselves now implicated in a dishonest cover-up! The President of the Hebrew University, Professor Menachem Magidor, and the Rector Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch jointly issued a deliberately false “spin” announcement regarding the MA thesis of the student, claiming that the media had incorrectly described what was in it. Instead of repudiating the student and her “academic advisors,” Magidor and Rabinowitch closed ranks with them and insisted that Nitzan’s “research” represents serious scholarship. The Nitzan Affair simply shows how completely devoid of serious academic standards and quality controls parts of Israeli academia are today.

Hebrew University apologists tried to defuse the cries of outrage over the “research” by claiming that reports about it were all part of some sort of vast right-wing conspiracy. The first two media reports appeared on web sites, one Hebrew and one English, both associated with those on the Israeli Right. The apologists suggested that these were misrepresenting the thesis for political reasons. Then Magidor and Rabinovitch proclaimed that reading the entire thesis would show that it is a serious piece of scholarship. They obviously did not read it.

Well, I have now read the entire thesis (in Hebrew). [You can also, if you read Hebrew] It is not a serious piece of research. It is a disgrace and an embarrassment for all of Israeli academia. The descriptions of it on the two “rightwing” web sites were entirely accurate, and the heads of the Hebrew University simply lied about its contents, in a pathetic attempt at cover-up. While University apologists dismissed complaints about the thesis as tendentious misrepresentation of it by a vast rightwing conspiracy, the rallying in defense of the thesis by the Hebrew University administration and some professors looks a whole lot like a leftwing conspiracy to cover up.
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Update: more posts on this subject at World Reacts to Israel’s No Rape Strategy and Complete Story of “No Rape = Racism” Essay.

I wish I were making this up as some sort of a pre-Purim joke. But it seems that the latest anti-Israel outrage coming out of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is its awarding a prize to a graduate student for an essay in which the student claims that Israel is abusing and oppressing Palestinians by not raping their women.

Really.

Had it not been awarded a prize by a panel of the Hebrew University’s distinguished professors, the whole matter could be dismissed as just another idiotic essay by a moonbat grad student, not something worthy of any attention being paid to it. But according to news reports, the essay in question has now been published by the Hebrew University’s “Shaine Center,” at the enthusiastic recommendation of a Hebrew University professors’ committee headed by Dr. Zali Gurevitch. The latter is a leftist anthropologist who taught for several years at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Don’t worry, I never heard of it either. His web page is here. Gurevich runs the Shaine Center, which awarded the prize. His fellow perps in this atrocity are listed here.

I wonder if the Shaine family knows what is being done with their contributions to the university!

The essay indicting Israeli soldiers for not raping Palestinian women was the product of the crayon of an MA student named Tal Nitzan. Tal is a she.

Her main theme is that the “lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.” The “political purpose” is that Israel fears the Palestinians demographically and so IDF soldiers do not rape the women to avoid creating new Palestinians and little intifaders.

Here is Nitzan at her finest: “In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences – just as organized military rape would have done.” Israeli racism has resulted in suppressed Jewish-male sexual desire for Palestinian women, just another manifestation of Zionist racism. Since the absence of rape of Arab women by Israeli soldiers has no parallel in any other human army in wartime anytime in history, the only conclusion must be that Jewish soldiers are far more racist and intolerant than the others.

Now Nitzan and her guru Gurevitch rule out automatically all other alternative explanations for why Israeli troops do not rape Arab women.

The possibility that Israeli troops are simply civilized humans is ruled out as an imponderable. Ditto for the possibility that Jewish ethics serve to deter such abuse of Arab women.

Instead, Nitzan claims that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are “de-humanized” in the soldiers’ eyes. I guess that means they are not rape worthy. You know, unlike Shulamit Aloni, Yael Dayan, and Tamar Gozansky.
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Seraphic Secret has a post about Muhammad Al-Dura, the boy actor who played dead in a September 30, 2000 France2 TV production. The video, shown around the globe, catapulted Muhammad into an icon of the Palestinian uprising. Despite the bad acting, the entire population of planet Earth believed that Al-Dura really died. Masterful editing by Charles Enderlin, a Jew-hating French Jew, did the trick. Enderlin simply erased the weak scenes, like the one showing the boy move moments after an Arab chorus dramatically pronounced him dead.

Muhammed Al Durah is alive. My guess is that he’s in a madrassah somewhere in Pakistan or Sudan. Meanwhile, his father makes a nice living traveling about the Muslim world signing pictures of his “dead son” much like O.J. Simpson signing memorabilia at sports conventions.

Unlike Al-Dura, Yuval Abedeh and Dorit Benisian are dead, victims of a Kassam rocket fired by Al-Dura’s relatives from Gaza. Their death did not induce global outrage, no UN resolutions, but the very fact that they existed illuminates the greatness of the Jewish soul and the magic that is the state of Israel.

In the early 1990s when our wife was studying Hebrew in an Ashdod Ulpan, the place was swarming with newly arrived Ethiopians. The kids urinated in the washing machine, confusing it with a toilet. Today those kids are engineers in the the factory that produces washing machines. That is the miracle of Israel. In less than a generation, a mere ten years after their parents escaped a primitive life in Ethiopia, Yuval and Dorit could look forward to life as scientists, engineers, or artists. We mourn their loss and cry with the Jews of Sderot.

Yuval Abebeh

Sept 29, 2004 – On the eve of the Sukkot holiday, Yuval Abebeh, 4, and Dorit Benisian, 2, both of Sderot, were killed by a Kassam rocket fired from Gaza.
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Israeli political classes suffer from a severe case of cognitive dissonance. They seem to understand that mistreating Arabs will cause a backlash. Yet, they fail to comprehend that the same holds true for mistreating Jews. Abused Religious-Zionists are destined to rule Israel in the near future, as their percentage of the population continues to grow rapidly. Once in power they will for certain be kinder to the opposition than the militant secularist were when they were in power.

Neriah Ofan is a hero of biblical proportions. He did his military service in the IDF’s elite undercover Duvdevan unit and was highly decorated for bravery. He lives with his wife and five children in the Lehavah outpost (Yitzhar) with nine other families. A true warrior, he has dedicated his life to defending the right of Jews to live anywhere in the land that God gave to their ancestors. Unfortunately, he is currently in exile, put there by an administrative restraining order from his own government.

One of the Jewish residents of Samaria to be barred from his home by IDF order is Neriah Ofan, formerly a decorated soldier from the elite undercover Duvdevan unit. In recent years, Ofan has restored an ancient tradition by organizing marches around the walls of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on the eve of every Jewish calendar month.

Ofan received the order banning him from his home in Yitzhar after midnight last night.

“The establishment is pursuing those who threaten to replace it. I will continue to spread the word and wake people up in an effort to replace the regime with an authentic Jewish establishment,” Ofan said.

The IDF banned Ofan from his home, along with 19 others, in 2006, again without any charges being placed and no due process. Prior to the 2005 Disengagement, Ofan was jailed without trial via administrative detention order due to fears by the government that his logistical skills in organizing the monthly encirclement of the Temple Mount were being used to organize opposition to the expulsion.

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To celebrate the year 5768 since creation, we compiled this concise history of Judea and Jerusalem. For extra bonus points we added a photo gallery at the end. Enjoy!

Canaanite tribes were the first settlers in what was then appropriately named Canaan. They remained its principal inhabitants till the second millennium BC. In the middle of the millennium twelve Hebrew tribes, originating in Mesopotamia, settled in the hills. At the same time Philistines from the Aegean settled in the southern coastal plain. The Hebrews eventually established the Kingdom of Israel.

In 722 BC, the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians; ten of the tribes were exiled and are considered ‘lost’ till this day. The remaining Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians in the year 586 BC, the Temple was destroyed, and the Sons of Israel went into the first Babylonian exile.

In 539 BC, Babylon was conquered by the Persians and the tribe of Judah was allowed to return to its homeland. In 538 BC, with permission from Cyrus, king of Persia, Sheshbazzar led a return and begun rebuilding the Temple. The Second Temple was completed by Governor Zrubbabel in 520 to 515 BC but Jerusalem remained in ruins.
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Cal Thomas’ analogy equating Islam to a slow spreading cancer whipped up a storm amongst the Islamists and their appeasers. We have frequently equated those appeasers to HIV. Like the virus, they weaken our immune system so the Islamists can move in for the kill. Analogies are used to provide insight and clarity. The cancer analogy is useful but imprecise, so we borrowed a better one from Mother Nature, the source of all good analogies.

We are talking, of course, about the relationship between the ichneumonid wasp Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga and the orb-weaving spider Plesiometa argyra. Dr. William G. Eberhard’s paper explaining the parasitic relationship in the Journal of Arachnology is here. Damn Interesting has an excellent summary in Mind-Controlling Wasps and Zombie Spiders.

In the forests of Costa Rica, there lurks a sinister variety of wasp, bent on hijacking the minds of hapless spiders for its own ends. Left unmolested, a variety of orb spider known as “Plesiometa argyra” spends every day of its life carefully reconstructing its perfectly round web, and feasting on the insects unfortunate enough to become snagged upon it. But should one of these spiders fall victim to this as-yet-unnamed species of wasp, the spider is stripped of its free will, and made to spend the last evening of its existence building a protective shelter for the larvae that infect it.

It is a true example of mind control in nature, and though scientists are well aware of the method of infection, they are uncertain exactly how the mind control is accomplished. When a wasp successfully attacks a host spider, the spider is temporarily paralyzed as the wasp lays eggs on the tip of the spider’s abdomen. Once the wasp departs, the spider regains its ability to move, and it continues its daily web construction for the next two weeks as though nothing has changed. Meanwhile, the wasp’s growing larvae cling to the spider’s belly and feed on its juices through a number of small punctures.
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Mahmod Mahmod was found guilty in the honor killing of his 20 year old daughter (Telegraph June 11, 2007).

A father of a 20-year-old woman who was killed and buried in a suitcase under a patio was today found guilty of her murder.

Banaz Mahmod was strangled in a so-called “honor” killing after her family disapproved of her relationship with her boyfriend.

Her father Mahmod Mahmod and his brother Ari Mahmod ordered the murder because they believed she had shamed the family.

A number of police officers are facing an internal disciplinary investigation over the handling of the case after it emerged that Miss Mahmod had told police four times that she feared for her life.

She even wrote a letter naming those she thought would do it – one of whom later admitted his part in the killing.

The Scotland Yard is facing severe criticism (Telegraph June 12, 2007).
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Welcome Lizards. Little Green Footballs has linked to our site bumping our traffic up by orders of magnitude. Thank you, Charles! EU Referendum, our favorite UK Blog, also linked to Preparing for War Circa 1967, thank you! By popular demand, here is an encore pictorial essay on the Six Day War.

The Wailing Wall a couple of days after we liberated Jerusalem. Read more >

On June 8, 1967, exactly 40 years ago, I entered Old Jerusalem. Like the other soldiers around me, I had a sense of the monumental significance of the unfolding events. 2000 years of longing had just been satisfied. Raised on a secular social democratic diet, we nonetheless studied the bible and Jewish history in school, as was mandatory in Israel at the time. So we stood shoulder to shoulder at the Wailing Wall with tears in our eyes.

Prior to the start of the Six Day War Israel went through a month of preparations. Here are some scenes published, starting May 23, in what the Air Force called Readiness Bulletins.

Say it with flowers. Read more >