Israel Matzav

Petition against awarding Israel prize to civil war mongering Professor

The State's Attorney's office was in the 'Supreme Court' yesterday to defend the indefensible: The granting of the Israel Prize to Professor Zeev Sternhell (pictured), a Hebrew University professor who has called for civil war and terror attacks against Jews.

The State Attorney's Office asked the High Court Sunday to reject a petition by the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, Professors for a Strong Israel and the community of Ofra against granting the Israel Prize to historian Ze'ev Sternhell. The petitioners cited a 2001 article by Sternhell in which he advised Arab terrorists to target Jewish communities outside the "Green Line" and a 1988 article in which he advocated that the IDF "storm Ofra with tanks" as reasons for rejecting Sternhell as a prize recipient.

The State Attorney's reply said that the judges' committee made its decision based primarily on "professional and research-related" considerations. "When weighing the sum total of Prof. Sternhell's prolific research activity and his overall contribution to Israeli society vis-à-vis the single [sic] opinion column which angered the petitioners, the scale is tipped so markedly to one direction that there is no way to compare the two." Accepting the petition would be "an injustice," the state said, because it would involve diminishing Sternhell's life's work "to the level of a sticker."

Arutz Sheva is also kind enough to provide us with a sample of the Sternhell article from 2001.

In his article, “Against the Moonstruck Government” (Haaretz, May 11, 2001) Sternhell legitimized arab terrorism in Judea and Samaria:

"Many Israelis, possibly the majority of the voters, do not doubt the legitimacy of the armed resistance in the territories proper. Had the Palestinians the least bit of sense, they would have concentrated their struggle against the settlements and would not hurt women and children, fire rockets on Gilo, Nachal Oz, and Sderot, or plant explosives on the western side of the Green Line. In this manner, the Palestinians would themselves draft the solution that will be reached in any case."

But as I noted in my earlier post about Sternhell, that's not all he has done or written that is divisive:

Sternhell wrote in the Davar newspaper in 1988: "In the end we will have to use force against the settlers in Ofra or Elon Moreh. Only he who is willing to storm Ofra with tanks will be able to block the fascist danger threatening to drown Israeli democracy."

Sounds just like what the government tried to do in Amona - which is a neighborhood of Ofra - doesn't it? Here are some more examples of Sternhell's inflammatory writing:

"Sometimes it seems as if US President George W Bush wants Israel both to destroy Lebanon and to sustain painful losses," wrote Professor Sternhell. "That way, Israel provides him with an excellent alibi for the war in Iraq: The fight against terror is global, the blood price is the same, the methods of operation and the means are identical, and the time needed for victory is long. The Israeli vassal is serving its master no less than the master is providing for its needs."

(Quoted by Donald Macintyre in London's Independent August 2, 2006).

Even in the earlier stages of the present assault, Ze’ev Sternhell, Israel’s leading scholar on fascism, could already write that the government “is no longer ashamed to speak of war when what they are really engaged in is colonial policing, which recalls the takeover by the white police of the poor neighbourhoods of the blacks in South Africa during the apartheid era.”

(Quoted by Aijaz Ahmad, The Nazification of Israel, June 2003) (Anyone still wonder who inspired Dhimmi Carter to call Israel an apartheid state)?

In the course of examining the founding myths of Israel, Ze'ev Sternhell, a professor at the Hebrew University, concludes that the Jewish state was always too nationalistic and not sufficiently international; he criticizes it for never having had the potential to "overcome the religious substance of Jewish nationalism and thus establish a liberal, secular, and open society, at peace with itself and its neighbors." In short, Sternhell finds that Zionism failed by being too Zionist and not enough socialist.

(From a 1999 article by Meyrav Wurmser)

Ze'ev Sternhell, Hebrew University expert on fascism, proposed destroying the Jewish settlements with IDF tanks as a means of boosting national morale.

(From a December 1, 1990 Jerusalem Post article - Hat Tip: Steven Plaut) (Sounds just like what happened in Gaza, doesn't it? Didn't do much for 'morale' did it)?

"In creating a colonial reality here, the settlers are impeding the normalization of Jewish life. No normal society can flourish in the oppressive conditions generated by the settlement enterprise. [...] There, on the hilltops of the West Bank, the foundations of real post-Zionism are being laid - the post-Zionism of blood and land. [...] The old Zionism took over a portion of this land in order to build a home for a persecuted people. [...] We did it because, in the final reckoning, we had no other choice. [...] Ein Harod, Nahalal, the Jewish neighborhoods of Haifa and Jerusalem - these were the foundations of our national renaissance. Netzarim [in the Gaza Strip], Elon Moreh and Kiryat Arba [in the WB] are threatening to drown us."

from "Post-Zionist settlement", Haaretz June 20, 2003, by Prof Zeev Sternhell, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,

(From Zeev in Be'er Sheva, writing on a Haaretz comment page, date unknown)

The secular and liberal public has no converse with the current NRP leadership, with the rabbis of the yeshivas in the territories. The secular and liberal public is disgusted by their attempt to make it an accomplice to every possible offense against principles dear to its heart. The disconnect is not just political, but is above all moral.

Furthermore, what this public has learned in recent weeks is that only force can stop force. The Europeans already experienced this last century. When a democratic regime is prepared to deploy against the wild revolutionary right, an organized and well-trained force, under a worthy command - the charge is blocked. When society is determined to enlist all of its strength to protect its liberal and democratic order; when it does not show weakness and does not hesitate - the fanatics retreat. Here is the real source of frustration being displayed by the ideological settlement enterprise. Its leaders know that - despite the unlimited resources at their disposal, despite the autonomous territorial base in the territories, despite their collaborators within the government - when it comes to an ability to prevent the Gaza pullout, the settlement movement is a paper tiger.

Nevertheless, make no mistake: what happened here in recent weeks was the closest thing to a rolling coup that a democratic society has experienced since the Algerian War. Had the system not withstood the test, as it has so far, the settlement movement would have taken control of Israeli society and transformed it into a colonialist society par excellence. The only thing still keeping Israel from sinking into open colonialism is the element of ephemerality and temporariness that accompanies occupation.

(From an article written in the aftermath of the 2005 expulsion of Jews from Gaza - too bad he doesn't hold the 'Palestinians' to that same standard of meeting force with force).

"Even orders given by a government elected by a perfectly formal democratic process can be criminal orders. The French in their colonies and the Americans in Vietnam provided classic examples of war crimes perpetrated by democratic governments."

(Ze'ev (Zeev) Sternhell, 17 October 2003)

"The Israeli government is not the first to be elected democratically and to order its security forces to perform actions that conscience can barely abide. France of the Fourth Republic and the United States in the period of the Vietnam War were democracies that forced their soldiers to commit war crimes or that ignored the perpetration of such crimes."

(Ze'ev (Zeev) Sternhell, 2 January 2004)

"Nobody is more expert than Israelis at emotional extortion. That's why every condemnation of the killing of Palestinian children, even by friends, is immediately interpreted as an expression of anti-Semitism."

(Ze'ev (Zeev) Sternhell, 2 April 2004)

"the upper levels of the [Israeli] establishment believe that since the U.S. rules unchallenged in the region, there is no reason not to continue consolidating Israel's position of hegemony, by constantly and calculatedly raising the threshold of violence."

(Ze'ev (Zeev) Sternhell, 2 April 2004)

"What do the young soldiers and the petty officers internalize today? They leave the army with the knowledge that human life, when the life is not a Jewish one, is extremely cheap. The death of a Jew by the hands of a Palestinian is a tragedy, the death of a Palestinian by the hands of a Jew is no big deal. They learn that the killing of Palestinian children, women and old people, the destruction of their homes and their property, is permitted not only in cases of self-defense, but even for the sake of operational convenience. They learn that the Palestinian population is of no interest to anyone and force can be used against it unrestrainedly, even when the only real purpose is revenge and scare tactics. From the affair of the commander of the Gaza Division and the company commander from the Girit outpost, they have learned the lesson that might makes right. Because the only sin lies not in committing crimes but in failing to conceal them."

(Ze'ev (Zeev) Sternhell, 12 November 2004) [Recall that he's speaking of the same army that sacrificed 35 soldiers at Jenin in 2002 rather than use air power and kill 'Palestinian' civilians. CiJ]

Have you all had enough of Zeev Sternhell yet? So why is he to receive the Israel prize? Because Israel's re-education minister, Comrade Yuli Tamir, wants to give it to him.

As some of you may recall, our education minister is the moonbat Comrade Yuli Tamir (pictured, top left), who wants to teach 'Israeli-Arab' children that the establishment of the State of Israel was a naqba (catastrophe), teach Jewish children that the country's borders ought to be the 'green line,' and who regards Jewish children hiking in the Golan Heights as a 'political provocation' to Syria. So I guess the fact that she has chosen to award the Israel Prize for Political Science to Zeev Sternhell of Hebrew University, who advocates using IDF tanks against, and calls for 'Palestinian' terror attacks on, revenants, should not be all that surprising. But it's still disgusting.

And don't think the 'Supreme Court' is going to take it away from him either.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:18 AM