Larry Derfner lands in Beirut
Many of you probably remember Larry Derfner, who was
fired by the JPost for sympathizing with the terrorists who perpetrated the Eilat terror attack. It seems that Derfner has landed at the
Beirut Daily Star (and at the Leftist blog 972 but I think he was there before too) - possibly on his way to
al-Guardian.
I wonder what would happen if he physically showed up in Beirut. Consider the experience of other
bloggers and
reporters.
Labels: Beirut, Larry Derfner
Derfner: It ain't over 'til it's over
Received by email from one of my friends.
It ain't over.
The JPost has received hundreds of complaints about [Derfner's] firing.
Please write to Steve Linde and express a reasoned but firm and polite opinion that the JPost did right and should not back down.
This isn't a popularity contest but one of principled morality.
Would the JPost continue paying someone who wrote that Dafni Lif (the J14 leader) should be killed?
steve@jpost.com
Okay, better write....
Labels: Jerusalem Post, Larry Derfner, Palestinian terrorism
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, September 2:
1) Darth Friedman
Lando: Lord Vader, what about Leia and the Wookiee?
Darth Vader : They must never again leave this city.
Lando : [outraged] That was never a condition of our agreement, nor was giving Han to this bounty hunter!
Darth Vader : Perhaps you think you're being treated unfairly?
Lando : [after a pause; nervous tone] No.
Darth Vader : Good. You know it would be unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison here.
Lando : [to himself] This deal is getting worse all the time!
Darth Vader: Calrissian. Take the princess and the Wookie to my ship.
Lando: You said they'd be left at the city under my supervision!
Darth Vader: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further
Dialogue from The Empire Strikes Back
A few months ago, in End of Mideast Wholesale, Thomas Friedman wrote: For the last 30 years, Israel enjoyed peace with Egypt wholesale — by having peace with just one man, Hosni Mubarak. That sale is over. Today, post-Mubarak, to sustain the peace treaty with Egypt in any kind of stable manner, Israel is going to have to pay retail. It is going to have to make peace with 85 million Egyptians. The days in which one phone call by Israel to Mubarak could shut down any crisis in relations are over.
It was an outrageous judgment then; the recent terror attacks from Egypt exposed the perniciousness of this viewpoint. Just as Darth Vader expected Lando Calrissian to accept his changing circumstances with equanimity, so does Thomas Friedman expect Israel to act. By Friedman's logic, Israel must keep Egypt happy, but Egypt need not reciprocate.
Guy Bechor questions this ideology in Mideast Rules must Change (h/t Love of the Land) While Israel paid with hard, irreversible currency when it handed over land to the Arab side, the Arabs paid with soft, completely reversible currency - that is, words and agreements. Now we are hearing claims that these deals were made with the regimes rather than with the “people”; that is, they lack any legitimacy.
In Egypt there are many voices, including among presidential candidates, declaring that the Camp David Accord with Israel must be annulled or at least changed. That is, change the aspects that pertain to “peace” with Israel. Yet if the Egyptians wish to annul the Camp David Accord, will they return the Sinai desert to Israel? After all, they received this territory through the peace treaty between the two states, after failing to secure it through war. Yet for some reason, this is unthinkable for them.
Why is Israel responsible to make everyone else happy for there to be peace?
2) Can Libya teach us anything?
Many are treating the apparently overthrow of Qaddafi as a clearcut victory, though it may be too early to pop the corks. Still Reuel Marc Gerecht wonders if there's a lesson for Syria.Syria will be his real test. The arguments for supporting Syrian protesters are easily as strong as those mustered to save the people of Benghazi. After months facing the regime snipers’ machine guns, tanks and torture, demonstrators are openly calling for foreign intervention. And the regime’s strategic sins against the United States are far greater than those committed by the Libyan Nero. Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah — the two terrorist powerhouses of the Middle East — are Damascus’s closest friends. Almost every Arab terrorist group, spawned in the hothouses of Islamic militancy and Arab nationalism, has had a presence in Damascus. The ruling Assad family has been the great enabler of terrorism against the United States — from the 1983 Beirut bombings to the 1996 attack on Khobar Towers, and quite possibly to Sept. 11 via the operational carte blanche given to Imad Mughniya and Hezbollah. Mughniya, Iran’s dark Arab prince who served as Tehran’s liaison with Arab terrorists, and Hezbollah likely aided al-Qaeda in the 1990s. More so than any Sunni-led Arab state, the Assad regime has reveled in its “front-line” hostility toward Israel.
For decades foreign policy “realists” dreamed of severing the Assads and Syria’s ruling Shiite Alawite clan from Iran and marrying them to the peace process. This delusional aspiration — it ignored the sectarian and religious reality of Syrian politics — appears dead. Addicted to viewing the region through a Palestinian-Israeli lens, Obama may finally look strategically at Syria.
Gerecht clearly believes that the United States needs to get involved because the Syrian government isn't just turning its guns against its own people but has been an enemy in war to the United States and its allies.
3) 1 million on the 3rd?
A funny thing with the protests in Israel, reality intruded. Isabel Kershner reports: After six weeks of tent encampments and rallies featuring popular singers that drew as many as 300,000 people into the streets on the first Saturday in August, the Sept. 3 rally has been described by its promoters as a million-person march.
But for now the movement is in a kind of hiatus, with nagging questions about where it will go. The mid-August attack by Palestinian militants that killed eight Israelis near the southern city of Eilat, close to the Egyptian border, followed by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza, proved to be a major interruption, abruptly changing the public discourse back to the more familiar mode of Israeli security in hostile surroundings.
In addition, disagreements have emerged among the groups that make up the leadership of the protest movement, along with increasing grumbling about some of the higher-profile leaders themselves. The giddy festival atmosphere that first enveloped the social protest has dissipated. The rows of tents at the flagship encampment lining Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv are gradually emptying.
I wish that Kershner had provided more details about the dissatisfaction with the leadership of the protests. Of course the emptying of the tents may just be a sign that summer's over and that protesters no longer have the time.
Despite Kershner's generally positive portrayal of the protests, Challah Hu Akbar pointed out that a feeder demonstration did not go well.Some 20 activists from southern Israel marched to Jerusalem from the south and are protesting against the cost of living in front of the prime minister's residence.
If the million protesters don't show it won't be the only recent underwhelming protest.
4) Yelling "fire"
The new editor of the Jerusalem Post, Steven Linde defends his decision to fire Larry Derfner: By trying to rationalize the murder of his fellow Jews by terrorists, Derfner – who has always been the consummate journalist for the Post – went beyond the pale. Consequently we terminated his employment.
The move, I stress, had nothing to do with threats to cancel subscriptions or advertisements; it was an editorial decision taken on moral grounds. While politically independent, the Post is a quintessentially Zionist newspaper priding itself on its patriotism and credibility, as well as its balanced reporting and diverse commentaries.
If I'm understanding Linde he's arguing that Derfner's post was similar to yelling "fire" in crowded movie theater. So he, in turn said, "you're fired." A rabbi was recently arrested for incitement, so I wonder if there may have been a legal concern too.
5) Followup
Yesterday I wrote that Ehud Olmert was Netanyahu's successor, which is technically correct, since Netanyahu served as PM from 1996-1999 (I didn't write "immediate"), given the context, I meant "predecessor." Thank to Carl for pointing it out!
Labels: Egyptian Revolution, housing crisis, Israeli economy, Israeli taxes, Larry Derfner, Libyan regime change, Middle East Media Sampler, Soccer Dad, Steve Linde, Syrian uprising
Caging the tiger
In Friday's JPost, editor Steven Linde discusses the decision to
fire Larry Derfner.
When Derfner asked that we run the piece in the Post, we rejected it and dissociated ourselves completely from his comments, to which we object in the strongest possible terms.
Even though his column did not appear in the paper, we came to the conclusion that we could no longer provide a stage to someone who openly promulgates such venomous views.
Derfner later wrote an apology that we chose not to run. In it, he expresses deep regret for his blog post, saying: “My intention was to shock people into recognition, but I ended up shocking many of them into revulsion, and twisting what I wanted to say into something I didn’t and don’t mean at all.
“I regret what I wrote [last] Sunday. I apologize to everyone who was offended by it, and I apologize to my countrymen. The post is no longer on my blog; I’ve taken it down.”
The substance of Derfner’s apology itself was not convincing. He used ludicrous logic to defend his position, repeating the same obscene sentiments that made many readers sick to their stomachs in the first place.
He had meant, he said, “to shock Israelis and friends of Israel into seeing how badly we’re hurting the Palestinians by denying them independence: It’s so bad that it’s helping drive them to try to kill us.”
If you saw Oren Kessler’s article in the paper this week about the anti-Israel coverage in the Arab media following the attacks on the southern border, you may have noticed that their commentaries were not significantly different from Derfner’s.
Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-inchief of the London-based pan- Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, wrote that Israel bore direct responsibility for the terrorist attack on its soil.
“This attack put the spotlight back on the most important struggle – that for the honor of the Arab and Islamic nation,” Atwan argued. “Resistance is a legitimate right as long as land is occupied and the people and holy places are humiliated.”
Derfner’s blog later appeared on a Hamas website, giving succor to Israel’s enemies.
...
The move, I stress, had nothing to do with threats to cancel subscriptions or advertisements; it was an editorial decision taken on moral grounds. While politically independent, the Post is a quintessentially Zionist newspaper priding itself on its patriotism and credibility, as well as its balanced reporting and diverse commentaries.
We are certainly not silencing the Left, and will continue to feature columnists of all political stripes. Freedom of speech has its limits, however, and Derfner clearly overstepped them.
I'm amazed that Derfner even tried to get the Post to run that piece. At least they had the common sense not to run it.
But then we all knew who Derfner was long before this incident. We just never had our faces rubbed in it quite the same way before.
Good riddance!
Labels: incitement, Jerusalem Post, Larry Derfner, Palestinian terrorism, Steve Linde
Assad's Israeli shills
Yes, you can hit a guy when he's down, especially when he's as nasty as Bashar al-Assad. David Keyes looks at some of the Israelis from whom we ought to (but won't) get
mea culpas for
shilling for Assad over the years.
Alon Liel, for example, is a former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and a professor at Tel Aviv University. When asked in 2008 if he trusted that the Syrian dictator sincerely desired peace, Liel responded, “Yes, I trust him and believe him. He wants peace and prosperity for his people."
Assad sure has a funny way of showing it -- imposing more than a decade of brutal tyranny, imprisoning bloggers, mowing down protesters in the streets, arresting opposition and rigging elections. When I asked Liel in 2009 if the brutality of Assad’s regime ever weighed on his work toward peace with Syria, he said simply “No.”
Liel was channeling President Jimmy Carter, who said of Assad’s father, "It's true, [Hafez] Assad is a dictator. But you can rely on him. He never lied to me. If you sign an agreement, he'll keep it ... [Hafez Assad] never lies.”
Elie Podeh, professor of Middle East studies at Hebrew University, wrote earlier this year in Haaretz that “Syria's natural place in the regional alignment is with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and there's nothing to prevent it from returning to that place if given the right incentives. But what is Israel doing? Very little. It hasn't responded to Assad's proposals with the appropriate seriousness.”
Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz’s Middle East analyst who holds a doctorate in history, lambasted Israel’s foreign minister for “babbl[ing] on about the collapse of the Assad family's rule,” and chastised Israel for “shrugging its shoulders at a chance to reach peace with Syria.”
Shortly before the Syrian people bravely rose up and confronted their oppressor, esteemed Yedioth Ahronoth journalist and former bureau chief to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Eitan Haber, wrote an article titled “Peace now, with Syria." “So why now?” he asked in the piece. “The answer is that now of all times Syrian President Bashar Assad is proposing peace talks.” Is it any wonder, though, that the dictator was proposing talks? What better way to deflect attention from economic ruin, political isolation, endemic torture, restive opposition and bottomless corruption?
Larry Derfner wrote in the Jerusalem Post of the necessity to make peace with Assad “if he’s willing.” “In essence, it means Syria joining the moderate, U.S.-aligned Arab camp with Egypt and Jordan. The U.S., of course, would have to throw in a lot of money for Syria ... If Bashar Assad is willing to take his country out of the ‘axis of evil’ with Iran, Hezbullah and Hamas but Israel turns him down, then we leave him no diplomatic option for retrieving Syria's land, and one way or another we will be endangering our own security ... [I]f we're serious about fighting a long-term ‘war on terror,’ about cracking away at the Middle East's radical Arab/Islamic axis, how can we pass up the chance to extract Syria from it -- to change Syria from being the axis's linchpin to being the wedge that divides it?”
The naivete of Israel’s diplomatic and journalism elite is shocking. Should a man who does not hesitate to murder thousands of his own citizens be trusted to treat his historic enemy with equanimity? Is a leader who does not trust his own people to vote freely worthy of the West’s trust? The answer, of course, is no. And that was the answer long before Assad's regime started openly butchering protesters in the street.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Alon Liel, Bashar al-Assad, Eitan Haber, Elie Podeh, Larry Derfner, Syrian uprising, Zvi Bar'el
An ignominous end
The JPost locks Larry Derfner in the cage and
throws away the key.
Due to professional disagreements with Larry Derfner connected to his personal blog, he will no longer be working at The Jerusalem Post.
Heh.
Labels: Jerusalem Post, Larry Derfner
Leftist uses Derfner firing as excuse to attack Caroline Glick
You had to know that
something like this would happen.
Larry’s dismissal is made all the more obscene by virtue of the light it sheds on the egregious double-standard that once-professional publication now employs in regard to conservative versus liberal opinion; I say that as someone who fondly remembers the fairly conservative op-ed editor of my own time at the Post soliciting op-ed pieces he openly disagreed with. Larry worries his post might end up on some Hamas website. This is yet to occur, and even if it does take place, it’s doubtful it would influence the decision of any young Palestinian whether to become a terrorist or not. By contrast, the writings of Jerusalem Post deputy-editor Caroline Glick were cited in the manic manifesto of Norwegian terrorist Anders Brevik in justification of the bloodbath he executed earlier this summer; unlike Derfner, Glick has yet to be shown the door.
Moreover, right after the Norway carnage the Jerusalem Post published an outlandish editorial suggesting the calculated, murderous rampage of a self-confessed xenophobe was an opportunity for Norway to revisit its immigration policy. The editorial was so beyond the pale the Post only put it up on the website with a disclaimer, and sparked such an outrage in Norway the newspaper had to spend another editorial on an apology; to my knowledge, all of those responsible for this serialised farce kept their jobs. Not so for Derfner.
Now, I’m not suggesting Glick and the author of that editorial (assuming they’re not the same person) should be fired for their opinions. There are many other reasons not to retain Glick’s services. Serious complaints of her conservative column’s ultra-liberal attitude to facts should be a warning sign for any reader; her suggestions regarding the possibility of an alliance between Israel and the Vatican, instead of fickle, fickle USA, are enough to give anybody pause; and as far as embarrassing appearances outside the Jpost go, her responsibility for a “satirical” clip showing a blackface minstrel Barack Obama singing to Israel’s destruction is hard to forget.
Yet Glick’s right to express even the strangest and most obsolete of opinion from the pages of what publication would have her remains in place and should not be infringed upon. Opinion is up there to be read, to be disagreed with and to be criticised; this is the fundamental principle of op-ed pages. The Jerusalem Post has obviously sunk so low and became wedded to Glenn-Beck-type readership so tightly it now applies this principle to conservative opinion only. Pity. It used to be a newspaper once.
Hello? It was a business decision! By
Derfner's own admission, the Post had HUNDREDS of subscription cancellations because of what Derfner wrote. A newspaper is a commercial enterprise (unlike blogs which are written by true believers who toil in anonymity for free). Is the Post supposed to lose money to give Derfner a platform to spew his noxious venom at Israelis?
Caroline Glick is probably the most popular columnist in Israel and is certainly the most popular Israeli columnist among Israelis abroad. Given that the writer - Dimi Reider - acknowledges Glick's right to write whatever she pleases, what is the point of implying that she should be fired because Derfner was?
Reider may not like it, but the fact is that English-speaking olim are
far more conservative than are Israelis or diaspora Jews. Unlike Haaretz, the JPost caters (or at least
did until a couple of weeks ago) to that crowd.
Finally, Glick did not suggest that Norway revisit its immigration policy. Neither did Barry Rubin, who has also been subject to
constant attack on the Post's editorial pages by representatives of the Norwegian government. Rather, Glick and Rubin suggested that Norway ought to do some introspection as to whether their support for 'Palestinian' terrorists was giving succor to those who would terrorize Norwegians. Norway still has not (or doesn't want to) get that point.
And for those wondering why Reider didn't mention Barry Rubin along with Glick, go
here.
Labels: Anders Behring Brievik, Barry Rubin, Caroline Glick, Dimi Reider, Eilat, Jerusalem Post, Larry Derfner, Norway, Palestinian terrorism, Utoya massacre
Larry Derfner does his best Howard Dean imitation
I saw this picture and I had to share it with you. It's now-fired JPost columnist Larry Derfner doing his best Howard Dean imitation (Hat Tip:
Big Journalism).
Heh.
Labels: Howard Dean, Jerusalem Post, Larry Derfner
Isi Leibler rips Derfner some new body parts
For the sake of full disclosure, here's
Isi Leibler's piece ( to which Derfer refers) in Yisrael HaYom.
Today, both in Israel and abroad, there are Jews who retain the wretched tradition of these renegade predecessors and identify with those who seek to destroy their people. They are few in number, but their influence extends beyond their Jewish fringe status because many occupy prominent roles in universities, the media and the arts. Of late, much of the Western liberal media has been promoting and idolizing them.
A few days ago, I was alerted to an unprecedented and obscene extension of such behavior, emanating, to my profound regret, from Larry Derfner, a senior professional staff writer for the Jerusalem Post. Only days after Israeli infants and families were brutally murdered by terrorists near Eilat, Derfner publicly stated that the murder of Israeli citizens was a justifiable weapon for Palestinians to employ in order to overcome the “occupation."
These remarks were not published as a Jerusalem Post column but rather were posted on his public website, to which readers of his regular articles are occasionally referred. They also appeared on Facebook.
A good newspaper opens its columns to opposing views. The Jerusalem Post, along with Israel’s most widely circulated Hebrew daily, Israel Hayom, irrespective of editorial positions, always offers its readers a wide spectrum of political opinions. I take pride in the fact that I contribute regular columns to both newspapers and my column is frequently accompanied by diametrically opposing views.
That, of course, does not imply that a self-respecting Israeli newspaper would accept contributions from a neo-Nazi, an anti-Semitic jihadist or a person justifying the murder of Israelis.
Whereas Derfner is regarded as an in-house leftist opinion writer for the Jerusalem Post, his chilling outburst extends way beyond traditional far-Left efforts to apply moral equivalence between Israelis and terrorists. In fact, Derfner actually scolds those on the Left who condemn Palestinian terrorism.
To avoid any misunderstanding, let me be specific about what Derfner actually said. He asserted that in fighting for their “independence” Palestinian terrorists are “justified” in targeting and deliberately murdering innocent Israeli women and children. He even explicitly said that “whoever the Palestinians were who killed the eight Israelis near Eilat last week, however vile the ideology was, they were justified to attack” and it was the Israeli government that was “to blame for those eight Israeli deaths.” He opined that it was high time for Israelis to appreciate “that terrorism in the face of a rejectionist Israeli government is justified … even to kill Israelis.”
He stated that while he endorsed the right of Palestinians “to use terrorism against us,” he did not wish to see Israelis killed and like Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, he felt that terrorism (while justifiable) can be counterproductive to the Palestinian cause. However Israeli “blindness” was “compelling the Palestinians to engage in terrorism” and by exposing the “unjust” Israeli government as being “to blame for these Israeli deaths,” it would contribute to “ending the occupation.”
Derfner conceded that such remarks would encourage Hamas, but was not unduly concerned because Hamas was already committed to Israel’s destruction. It was more important for him to ensure that Israelis recognized that by their behavior, “they are compelling Palestinians to engage in terrorism,” rather than worrying about whether his remarks would be quoted approvingly on Hamas websites. In fact, the Arab media has already widely reproduced his remarks, highlighting the fact that he is a prominent Jerusalem Post contributor.
Derfner concluded his shocking remarks with the extraordinary statement, “Writing this is not treason. It is patriotism.” That a person justifying the murder of innocent women and children in his own country can describe himself as a “patriot” makes one question his sanity.
In a twisted sense, Derfner is probably right in that his remarks are not treasonous. Although there may very well be grounds for the attorney-general to charge him with incitement to murder, his remarks are so vile that they go beyond treason. They display an utter lack of sensitivity, humanity or compassion for the tens of thousands of Israeli families who, since the creation of Israel, have lost loved ones, murdered by the barbarians whose actions Derfner justifies as being due to “harsh” Israeli government policies.
Read the whole thing.
The photoshop at the top was done by my very creative daughter
MR (daughter # 3, child #5). Yes, you may download it and use it, but please link back to this post so that in case anyone wants to hire her, I can pass that on to her. Thanks.
Labels: Israel's suicidal Left, Larry Derfner, Palestinian terrorism, self-hating Jews
Fired!
I'm sure you will all be saddened to hear that
Larry Derfner has been
fired by the JPost. Gee, do I post the whole thing in case he tries scrubbing it?
I got fired by The Jerusalem Post today. The paper got hundreds of notices of cancellations of subscription after my blog post (“The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror”) of Sunday last week; the reason being given for my firing, though, is the substance of the essay, despite the apology I published later. A page-one notice to this effect will be published in the Post tomorrow.
Maybe that will make the JPost editors re-think whether they really want to be Haaretz II. After all, Haaretz already does such a great job of endangering the State of Israel all by itself! (For the record, the JPost has not shown up this week, so apparently they just decided to cancel us at the end of last week).
What bothers me most is not that I got fired, but that I’m not being given the opportunity to fill in the picture that’s been so distorted in today’s Post column and in right-wing Web commentaries. The parts of the picture being obscured or outright hidden would show that while I misspoke myself harmfully, my intent was not to support, endorse, advocate, encourage or call for terror against Israelis, but to end it.
Incredibly, Derfner still doesn't get it. He doesn't understand why NOTHING justifies 'Palestinian' terrorism. He still thinks he's saving us by explaining to us how WE justify 'Palestinian' terror. But nothing does. What a pompous ass!
By skewing my words so badly, today’s Post column, the Web commentaries and Post publishes on page one tomorrow portray a writer announcing that he wants Israelis to get killed, instead of one who’s trying to stop that from happening.
Isn't that what Larry said? From his post last Sunday:
If those who oppose the occupation acknowledged publicly that it justifies Palestinian terrorism, then those who support the occupation would have to explain why it doesn’t. And that’s not easy for a nation that sanctifies the right to self-defense; a nation that elected Irgun leader Menachem Begin and Lehi leader Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister.
Oh - and get this:
Let me just add that I was told that the “great majority” of the Post staff opposed my firing. I’m truly grateful for the support they showed.
BWAHAHAHA!
Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out, Larry.
Maybe the
Independent or the
Guardian would hire him. He speaks their doublespeak.
Labels: Israel's suicidal Left, Larry Derfner, Palestinian terrorism, self-hating Jews
Derfner apologizes (or does he), keeps his job
In the wee hours of Friday morning, I reported on Larry Derfner's blog post in which he
justified 'Palestinian' terrorism against Israelis like last week's terror attacks near Eilat and the rockets fired at Israeli towns from Gaza over the course of the week. Along with many other people, I called for Derfner to be fired from his job as a JPost columnist, and for the attorney general to look into prosecuting him for incitement.
On Friday morning, Derfner's post was scrubbed clean, and he posted an '
apology.' The word 'apology' is in scare quotes for reasons you will soon see.
I wrote that because of the occupation, Palestinians are “justified” in attacking, even killing Israelis, that they have the “right” to do so. Later on I stressed that I didn’t want them to kill my countrymen, and that I would do anything necessary to stop it. I meant those two points to show that I wasn’t “for” terrorism, that while I thought the occupation justified it, that didn’t mean I supported it. But I see now that the distance from “justified” to “support” is way, way too short – and I am as far away as anybody can be from supporting attacks on Israel and Israelis.
If you justify something, aren't you supporting it? And what is Derfner defining as the 'occupation'? Territory liberated by Israel in 1967? The 'Palestinians' rule themselves in all of that territory except 20% of Hebron and parts of Jerusalem. But if land liberated in 1967 is the issue, why were there so many Arab (no Arabs were called 'Palestinian' back then) terror attacks against Israel before 1967? Does Derfner clarify the entire state of Israel as 'occupation'? If so, why were there terror attacks against Jews in this land even
before there was a State of Israel?
I meant, instead, to shock Israelis and friends of Israel into seeing how badly we’re hurting the Palestinians by denying them independence: It’s so bad that it’s helping drive them to try to kill us. This is something I believe, something liberal Israelis and friends of Israel believe, and I wrote that if we were to start saying so publicly, it might force other Israelis to finally confront the reality of what we’re doing to the Palestinians, and thereby get them to see that it’s wrong and must stop.
Independence? That's the issue? They rule themselves. We could give them autonomy tomorrow morning (and de facto they already have it) and I'll guarantee you that they would continue to attack us.
But worse, how and why are we to blame because they are killing us? Aren't they responsible for their own actions?
What I mean is this: The occupation does not justify Palestinian terror. It does, however, provoke it. Palestinians do not have the right to attack or kill Israelis. They, do, however, have the incentive to, and part, though not all, of that incentive is provided them by the occupation. I believe that if Israel gives the Palestinians their independence, we have enough military power to neutralize whatever leftover incentive they would have to attack us. So my purpose with regard to Palestinian terror against Israelis is not to legitimize it, God forbid, but to end it.
I'm a lawyer and those hairs are too fine for me to split. Except for one: Give them their 'independence' and THEN use their military power to neutralize.... In Derfner's world, if we give them their independence they shouldn't have any incentive left to attack us. And if they will still have an incentive left to attack us (which they will - they attacked us before there was a state and before what most people who think there is an occupation at all would call an occupation), why should we give them 'independence' and worsen our military position?
Not much of an apology, is it?
Labels: Israel's suicidal Left, Larry Derfner, outrageous apologies, Palestinian terrorism
JPost columnist writes personal blog justifying 'Palestinian' terror
Uber Leftist Larry Derfner writes a weekly column for the JPost called
Rattling the Cage. He also blogs with anti-Israel nutcase Richard Silverstein, and writes a personal blog.
I don't read Derfner as a rule. I read enough hostile material every week that I don't need an American-born Israeli Jew to raise my blood pressure any more. If the Post wants to have him, that's their problem. Until now.
On Sunday, Derfner wrote a piece on his personal blog justifying last week's terror attacks north of Eilat and justifying 'Palestinian' terror generally. That's right. An American-born Israeli Jew living in the cushy suburb of Modiin wrote a blog
justifying 'Palestinian' terror attacks.
I think a lot of people who realize that the occupation is wrong also realize that the Palestinians have the right to resist it – to use violence against Israelis, even to kill Israelis, especially when Israel is showing zero willingness to end the occupation, which has been the case since the Netanyahu government took over (among other times in the past).
But people don’t want to say this, especially right after a terror attack like this last one that killed eight Israelis near Eilat. And there are lots of good reasons for this reticence, such as: You don’t want to further upset your own countrymen when they are grieving, you don’t want to say or write anything that could be picked up by Israel’s enemies and used as justification for killing more of us. (These are good reasons; fear of being called a traitor, for instance, is a bad reason.)
But I think it’s time to overcome this reticence, even at the cost of enflaming the already enflamed sensitivities of the Israeli public, because this unwillingness to say outright that Palestinians have the right to fight the occupation, especially now, inadvertently helps keep the occupation going.
...
But if, on the other hand, we were to say very forthrightly what many of us believe and the rest of us suspect – that the Palestinians, like every nation living under hostile rule, have the right to fight back, that their terrorism, especially in the face of a rejectionist Israeli government, is justified – what effect would that have? A powerful one, I think, because the truth is powerful. If those who oppose the occupation acknowledged publicly that it justifies Palestinian terrorism, then those who support the occupation would have to explain why it doesn’t. And that’s not easy for a nation that sanctifies the right to self-defense; a nation that elected Irgun leader Menachem Begin and Lehi leader Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister.
It's time to lock Larry Derfner in the cage and throw away the key. It's time to stop carrying his drivel in the JPost. The Post
fired Naomi Chazan for a lot less.
The JPost is
looking into it. There's currently a blog (which as I understand it, need not be approved by the editors) on the Post's website
calling for Derfner to be indicted for incitement.
Jonathan Tobin adds:
In doing so, Derfner has exposed the fundamental flaw in the left’s position on terror. His obscene post will, as he predicted, lead some of his fellow countrymen to call him a traitor, and Israel’s enemies will cite it in defense of their policy of murder. But the significant aspect of this piece is it shows how pious liberals who believe the blame for the conflict falls upon the Jews are inevitably led to the justification of murder.
Derfner claims, despite all the evidence of the past 18 years of peace processing, the blame for the continuation of the conflict falls squarely on Israel and no one else. He says the Palestinian terrorists are merely fighting for their “independence” against an evil Israeli “occupation.” But, as even Shimon Peres has said, if the conflict were just about the Palestinian desire for an independent state, it would have been over more than a decade ago when Yasir Arafat chose to reject Ehud Barak’s offer at Camp David in July 2000. Since then, that offer has been repeated and rejected. But that is meaningless to Derfner, because he and those who think like him have never been really been interested in the Palestinians or what they do or want. His focus is hatred of the Israeli right and the settlement movement, and to discuss anything else, even if that means ignoring the truth about Palestinian nationalism and its implacable desire to destroy Israel no matter where its borders are drawn, is a distraction.
To Derfner’s way of thinking, so long as Israel is not unilaterally surrendering to the Palestinians, it is provoking, nay “compelling” them to murder Jews. For him, there is no “cycle of violence” which wrongly treats Palestinian murder and Israeli self-defense on the same moral plain. As far as he is concerned, the Arabs are in the right and the Israelis in the wrong, and therefore the latter has no logical right to complain about being murdered. Derfner claims he wishes the Palestinians wouldn’t employ terrorism since, presumably, he is not happy to see people slaughtered in this fashion and wouldn’t like it if it happened to him or his family and friends. But he says it’s time for Israeli leftists to stop denouncing Arab terror because it’s hypocritical. That is the crux of his position, and one has to admit there is more logic to it than the Jewish liberals and leftists (who will, no doubt, condemn his words), will admit.
Read the whole thing.
For those wondering about Mrs. Carl's attempt to
cancel our JPost hard copy subscription... it continues to show up every day.
Labels: Israeli Left, Larry Derfner, Palestinian terrorism, self-hating Jews
The whining Larry Derfner
Larry Derfner
whines about Friday's events at Ben Gurion Airport.
Let me repeat – the police started off arresting the demonstrators, but very shortly their main task was to keep them from being assaulted. They had to hold back the herd = and that’s what these people were, a herd incited by the idea that these protesters, non-violent protesters trying to get to the West Bank, were a menace, an immediate threat to their security.
And I do not buy the idea that these people are helpless pawns being manipulated by the government, the media, the right-wing politicians. Most Israelis, even if they wouldn’t join a mob like the one at the airport, want to hear the belligerent rhetoric the opinion-makers are feeding them. They hate anybody who says anything bad about Israel, and take their words automatically as “blood libels.” The opinion-makers know this, and the ones who are popular and want to stay that way tell the people what they want to hear.
Who’s manipulating whom is a chicken-and-egg question.
Watching my enraged countrymen at Ben-Gurion, I imagined the daily headlines having been distilled into a kind of political methadrine and mainlined into their veins. Few Israelis would join them in physically going after people chanting slogans. But in their insistence that protesters like these be silenced because their words are acts of violence, acts of war, of terrorism, they represent the majority. They are an authentic expression of the national will. Theirs is the loudest voice in the land, it’s joined by the voice of Netanyahu, the government, the settlers and most of the media. All competing voices are drowned out.
Damned straight (with the exception of our hopelessly Leftist media). We are sick and tired of the traitors in our midst who defend the 'right' of the 'Palestinians' to send suicide bombers to murder us. It's a pity those 'activists' didn't get their butts kicked on Friday. And Derfner along with them.
Labels: Larry Derfner, traitor
The despicable Larry Derfner
Mrs. Carl said this morning that she wants to cancel the JPost subscription. We never read it in hard copy except on the Sabbath anyway, and they won't let you have a Sabbath only subscription, so why bother. This
despicable article by Larry Derfner (Hat Tip:
Shy Guy) is the sort of thing that I would expect to see in Haaretz (which is why I don't have a subscription to Haartez). It will make me cancel the Post subscription much sooner. And cancel it altogether.
ISRAEL’S CHAMPIONS in this affair are focusing on the Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque at Rachel’s Tomb, saying it didn’t exist until the 1990s, their point being that Rachel’s Tomb belongs to Jews and Jews alone.
My point is this: Who cares when the Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque was built? If UNESCO is saying Rachel’s Tomb is holy to three religions, why do we have to insist that’s it’s only holy to one, to our religion?
And even if it’s true that the Palestinians only put up a mosque at Rachel’s Tomb to compete with the Jewish claim to the site, we Jews have been doing the same thing to them all over this country. Muslims destroyed Jewish synagogues and cemeteries? Israel destroyed Muslim mosques and cemeteries.
The reason it matters is that the Arabs deny any Jewish connection to this land. They claim we are interlopers who expelled the 'natives' from 'their' land. When the likes of UNESCO take a Jewish site like Rachel's tomb and turn it into a Muslim site, they are telling the world that the land belongs to the Muslims. The Jews? They were here centuries ago, say UNESCO, the 'Palestinians' and Larry Derfner. They're ancient history.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Israel is a Jewish state, Larry Derfner, Machpeila cave, Rachel's tomb
Many of you probably remember Larry Derfner, who was fired by the JPost for sympathizing with the terrorists who perpetrated the Eilat terror attack. It seems that Derfner has landed at the Beirut Daily Star (and at the Leftist blog 972 but I think he was there before too) - possibly on his way to al-Guardian.
