web analytics
May 23, 2013 /14 Sivan, 5773
At a Glance ▼
InDepth
Sponsored Post
The Tosfos Yomtov was convinced that the death of 300,000 –600,000 Jews during the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-49 were because of improper Tefila. Communicated: Tefilla

Chillul Tefila Bifarhesia, as well as halachicly challenged verbiage and dress, are external manifestations of a critical lack of personal yiras shomayim which has lethal consequences.



Home » InDepth » Op-Eds »

What The Israeli Left Means By The Word ‘Fascist’

Published: November 10th, 2010
tell a friend

Israel’s radical left is obsessed with the word “fascist.”
 
Israel is the only country in the Middle East where people vote and enjoy free speech, a free press, due process and habeas corpus, but none of that makes any impression on an increasing number of Israeli left-wingers whose definition of fascist seems to be any government that doesn’t adopt left-wing policies.
 
At any rate, with Israel’s leftist chattering classes so eager to label virtually anyone and anything as fascist, perhaps it’s necessary to clarify just what such people mean when they use the word.
 
● It’s fascist to allow Israeli voters to dictate the decisions of the Israeli government. Those voters cannot be counted on to support correct policy choices.
 
● It’s fascist to allow Zionist students to hold rallies on campuses against anti-Israel groups that also hold campus rallies, such as those organized by Arab and Jewish leftist students.
 
● It’s fascist to complain that the Israeli media are dominated by leftists who prevent non-leftists from expressing themselves.
 
● It’s fascist to allow non-leftists to hold academic posts teaching political science, sociology, education, etc. These departments should serve only to instruct students in leftist ideas.
 
● It’s fascist to suggest that people applying for Israeli citizenship be required to express a commitment of loyalty to the country. (It’s OK, though, for other countries to require it.)
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to have a dominant ethnic majority. That makes it an apartheid-like entity. (It’s OK, though, for other countries to have one.)
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to ignore UN resolutions.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to use force to defend its citizens. Terror should be dealt with by Israel only through capitulation.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to allow people to express opinions and ideas with which the Left disagrees.
 
● It’s fascist for anyone to object to the use of university classrooms for anti-Israel political indoctrination and ideological brainwashing.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to reject the ideas preached by the international Left.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to expect Arabs to obey the law.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to interfere with the smuggling of explosives and other weapons to Hamas in Gaza.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to allow Jews to live in neighborhoods within Jerusalem.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to refuse to turn half of Jerusalem over to terrorists.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to allow Jews to move to and live in the Galilee.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to allow Jews to live in lands outside the “Green Line” pre-1967 borders. It’s also fascist for anyone to suggest Jews should have the right to live in the West Bank even if a Palestinian state is someday erected there.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to allow people to criticize judicial activism or other politicized behavior of the courts.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to expect Arabs to pay taxes.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to refuse to bail out Arab municipalities that have refused to collect taxes.
 
● It’s fascist for anyone to suggest that Israeli Arabs should do some form of national service.
 
● It’s fascist for Israel to defend its borders.
 
● It’s fascist to allow soldiers in uniform to attend classes in universities.
 
● It’s fascist to allow non-leftist students to criticize leftist professors.
 
● It’s fascist for Jews to shoot back.
 

● It’s fascist to remind leftists of how they have been wrong about almost everything.

 

 

Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa. His book “The Scout” is available at Amazon.com. He can be contacted at steveneplaut@yahoo.com.

tell a friend

About the Author: Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa. He can be contacted at steveneplaut@yahoo.com.


You might also be interested in:


no comments

You must log in to post a comment.

SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend

Current Top Story
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has said he will never recognize a Jewish state and there will be no Jews allowed in a Palestinian State.
J Street: Demand Israel’s Peace Process Goal be Palestinian State
Latest Indepth Stories
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has said he will never recognize a Jewish state and there will be no Jews allowed in a Palestinian State.
InDepth → Op-Eds

parently an affront to J Street’s worldview, the focus of which appears to be the creation of a Palestinian State, whether or not that will bring peace.

Moshe-Feiglin-022213
InDepth → Columns → Moshe Feiglin

The importance of the caucus on organ harvesting in China, sponsored recently by the Liberal Lobby in the Knesset, cannot be exaggerated. On the surface, the caucus’s topic seems odd. Knesset members and other VIPs were called together to discuss horrors being perpetrated by the Communist regime in China against what the government there calls “regime opponents.”

Shurin-Dov
InDepth → Columns → Dov Shurin

My mother, the eldest daughter of Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky, zt”l, was niftar last month at the age of 92. She took her last breath in her home in Efrat, Israel, next door to the shul that was my father’s for 24 years before his passing in 2007.

InDepth → Columns → Louis Rene Beres

Following the Boston Marathon bombing, one crucial point will likely remain overlooked. The most loathsome aspect of this or any other terror bombing attack on civilians will always lie in the inexpressibility of physical pain. While all decent people will abhor the idea of bombs expressly directed at the innocent, whether here or in other countries, none will ever be able to process the very deepest horrors of what has been inflicted.

InDepth → Columns → Keeping Jerusalem

It’s only natural to see increasing evidence of Jerusalem’s glorious Jewish past being unearthed, quite literally, under modern Israeli sovereignty. The new archaeological finds are also very timely – as the Arab onslaught attempting to detach Jerusalem from its Jewish roots gains steam, the facts on the ground, or “under” the ground, show quite otherwise.

InDepth → Op-Eds

The Talmud (Berachot 26b) says, “tefillot avot tiknum” – “prayer was established by the avot.” The Talmud then uses the following verse (Bereshit 19:27) to prove how Avraham established prayer: “Vayaskem Avraham baboker el hamakom asher amad sham et pnei Hashem” – “And Avraham got up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before God.”

InDepth → Op-Eds

Nearly 13 years ago, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak journeyed to Camp David to end the conflict with the Palestinians. With the approval of President Clinton, he offered Yasir Arafat an independent Palestinian state in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza and in part of Jerusalem. Arafat said no.

InDepth → Op-Eds

The news that the Internal Revenue Service unfairly targeted conservative groups has brought renewed spotlight on a 2010 lawsuit filed by the pro-Israel group Z Street, which alleges it was also singled out by the IRS when applying for tax-exempt status.

InDepth → Editorial

In an editorial last week (“Circling the Wagons”) we noted the efforts by the administration and its supporters to dismiss allegations that the government’s spin on the Benghazi attack was designed to shield the president and that the IRS was improperly used to stifle opposition to Mr. Obama’s reelection.

InDepth → Editorial

As the controversies besetting the Obama administration continue to grow in number and intensity, the prospect that President Obama would seriously consider military action against Iran, should that country continue its drive to become a nuclear power, becomes more and more remote. So we welcome the current enhancement of sanctions against Iran on the federal and New York State levels.

InDepth → Interviews and Profiles

To his parents’ friends, he was “Mrs. Greenberg’s disgrace,” but to sports fans he is one of the greatest – if not the greatest – Jewish baseball players of all time. Long before Sandy Koufax, Hank Greenberg excited Jewish sports fans with his prowess on the baseball diamond.

InDepth → Front Page

To eat is to live – to keep our physical bodies alive. For without the body, there is nothing. No experience. No memory. No joy and no hardship. But man, unlike animals, eats to live and to enjoy. So how should a Jew respond when he is challenged as to why he imposes upon himself not just ceremonies dedicated to the enjoyment of eating but even more to the limiting of what he can eat?

InDepth → Op-Eds

Neither Secretary of State Kerry nor the president he serves seem to understand Russia’s goals in the Middle East.

More Articles from Steven Plaut
Plaut-041913
InDepth → Op-Eds

April 16, 2013

Dear Mr. President,

My heartfelt sympathies to you and the American people for the acts of protest carried out in Boston this week during the Boston Marathon. This really is a wake-up call for us all.

President Abraham Lincoln
InDepth → Op-Eds

The Israeli left, along with most of the world’s pseudo-intellectual classes, has suddenly discovered Abraham Lincoln, thanks to Steven Spielberg’s much-praised movie.

InDepth → Op-Eds

Honest Abe used exactly the same blockade tactic against the Confederacy over which the Israeli Left is now sobbing its eyes out.

InDepth → Op-Eds

Quick. Name all the Israeli parties that did not run in the recent election on a platform focusing on lowering the price of housing and the cost of living. After that, name all the Israeli parties who understand what has produced the rapid increase in housing prices and have a plan for coping with them and lowering them.

InDepth → Op-Eds

There is a widespread misconception that the Middle East conflict is complicated. In fact, it is really rather simple.

Indeed, one can basically summarize and explain the entire conflict in the context of the words “occupation” or “occupied territories” and people’s beliefs about the effects of such “occupation.”

InDepth → Op-Eds

In 1999, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his first go-round as prime minister, lost his reelection bid to Ehud Barak, much to the delight of Israel’s conscripted media and of many in its judicial system.

InDepth → Op-Eds

There is a species of radical leftist that believes the main purpose of taxpayer-funded universities is to indoctrinate students in radical left-wing ideology. Such people believe the only legitimate form of scholarly research and teaching is to force upon students the ideas and agendas of the left because only these represent correct thinking.

InDepth → Op-Eds

It is now official. Rachel Corrie, patron saint of the pro-terror radical left and its Islamofascist allies, essentially committed suicide in order to assist Palestinian terrorists. She was not killed in cavalier fashion by Israel. Israel had no particular reason to want her dead (as opposed to deported).

    Latest Poll

    Which is the most beautiful location in Jerusalem?









    View Results

    Loading ... Loading ...

Printed from: http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/what-the-israeli-left-means-by-the-word-fascist/2010/11/10/

Scan this QR code to visit this page online:

Related posts:

  1. Israeli Arabs Stone IDF Troops Manning Iron Dome System
Close