ISRAELI AUTHOR UNDER ATTACK FOR SPEAKING THE TRUTH ABOUT ‘PRICE TAG VANDALS’

May 11, 2014 at 12:38 (Cover Up, Israel, Palestine, Settler Violence)

Not only is Amos Oz under attack for speaking the truth, but the entire left in Israel is condemned along with his statements … in the second report.

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But one can rely on Amos Oz and his friends from the radical left to distort the picture. After all, there are some parts of the left that turn all of Israel into a racist monster on any occasion. So isn’t it wonderful that there is a handful of hooligans on hand to help them? 

There used to be a national left. There used to be a responsible left. There used to be a Zionist left. All of them are disappearing.

 

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Amos Oz: ‘Price tag’ vandals are ‘Hebrew neo-Nazis’ Acclaimed Israel author Amos Oz slams price tag attacks and those behind them, claiming perpetrators ‘enjoy support from nationalistic and even racist legislators.’ AFP, Ynetnews * One of Israel’s best known writers, Amos Oz, said that Israelis behind ‘price tag’ attacks against Muslims and Christian are “Hebrew neo-Nazis.” The award-winning author said that the term ‘price tag’, widely used to describe the attack, and ‘hill top youths’, the term used to describe the radical settler youths behind the attacks, are sanitized euphemisms. They are “sweet names for a monster that needs to be called what it is: Hebrew neo-Nazi groups,” Oz said at an event in Tel Aviv, which marked his 75th birthday and publication of his new book. “Our neo-Nazi groups enjoy the support of numerous nationalist or even racist legislators, as well as rabbis who give them what is in my view pseudo-religious justification,” he said at the event. Oz is staunch supporter of the two-state solution. Earlier Friday, vandals spray-painted anti-Christian graffiti on a Jerusalem church, despite police stepping up security around religious sites ahead of a visit by Pope Francis later this month. “Price tag… King David for the Jews… Jesus is garbage” was written in Hebrew on the wall of St George’s Romanian Orthodox church near an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Police also said “Death to Arabs” was found written on a house in the Old City in east Jerusalem, and swastikas were scrawled on the wall of a west Jerusalem apartment. After Hebrew graffiti reading “Death to Arabs and Christians and to everyone who hates Israel” was daubed on its Notre Dame complex in Jerusalem on Monday, the Roman Catholic church demanded Israeli action. “The bishops are very concerned about the lack of security and lack of responsiveness from the political sector, and fear an escalation of violence,” the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said. The attacks on Christian property come amid a rise in anti-Arab property crimes. Israeli ministers held an emergency meeting Wednesday, pledging to enforce harsh measures against perpetrators.  Although police have made scores of arrests, there have been nearly no successful prosecutions for such attacks, and the government has come up under mounting pressure to authorize the Shin Bet internal security agency to step in. * And the attack that followed ….. * Amos Oz has no right to preach Op-ed: How can the Israeli author slam rabbis who back ‘price tag’ thugs, as he legitimizes an Arab lawyer who called Israel a ‘Nazi monster’? * Amos Oz sits on the Public Council of B’Tselem, alongside one Adv. Hussein Abu Hussein. That same Abu Hussein has claimed that Israel is worse than a Nazi country, that it is a monster, and that it’s not enough to speak against the monster, but that something has to be done. Oz is right to claim that there are rabbis who back the Hilltop Youth hooligans. But when Oz sits together with Abu Hussein on the same public council, he legitimizes him. The connection between certain rabbis and “price tag” phenomena should be condemned, but it seems that the last person who has the right to preach is Amos Oz. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Yair Lapid can relax too. Before the last elections, Oz argued that (former Labor chairwoman) Shelly Yachimovich was worse than (former prime minister) Ehud Barak. It’s true that Barak led Israel to unprecedented concessions. It’s true that he accepted Bill Clinton’s proposal for a permanent status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. And it’s true that Yachimovich adopted Clinton’s outline. And it’s true that the Palestinians were the ones who turned down Clinton’s proposal, but Oz has eyes and he refuses to see. He has ears and he finds it difficult to hear. It doesn’t matter what the Palestinians do. Amos Oz will always condemn the Israelis. Once it was Yachimovich. Now it’s Lapid. The Hilltop Youth phenomenon is also being addressed by Oz with terrifying exaggeration. There isn’t a single right-wing politician left who has not condemned them, and so it’s time to say, “enough is enough.” Because this group of graffiti artists and tire slashers makes most of its political gain from the condemnations. And when the condemnation comes from Amos Oz – their achievement is all the greater. It’s unclear how many young people are involved. There could be dozens. But the past few weeks have created the impression that this is one of the strongest political movements in Israel. So we should put things in order. One far right-wing party ran in the last elections. One of its members, Arieh Eldad, is far from that group. The other member, Michael Ben-Ari, is suspected of being close to that group. But this party, and this is the important thing, did not even pass the electoral threshold to make it into the Knesset. In Sweden, thousands of people are members of neo-Nazi movements. They even have a magazine, Storm, which spreads defamatory and anti-Semitic statements. Any reasonable examination would reveal that the right, which can be viewed as neo-Nazi in the most enlightened countries such as Sweden and Norway, not to mention France and England, is much stronger than the far right in Israel. But one can rely on Amos Oz and his friends from the radical left to distort the picture. After all, there are some parts of the left that turn all of Israel into a racist monster on any occasion. So isn’t it wonderful that there is a handful of hooligans on hand to help them? Amos Oz and his friends on the left have some valid claims, and these should be heard. But the blindness on the left is no different to the blindness on the right. There used to be a national left. There used to be a responsible left. There used to be a Zionist left. All of them are disappearing. The relevant and vital left of the past has narrowed the great gulf that should exist between itself and people like Abu Hussein. The radicalizing rhetoric of Oz, the master and rabbi of the left, shows that he is bridging that gulf better than anyone. * Obviously the ‘right’ prefers a situation such as this … *