Could there be any Jew more demonised than Avigdor Lieberman? The Israeli foreign minister and head of the Yisrael Beytenu party is a taboo subject in London. People who would normally debate any Middle East situation with you, totally seize up when you ask them their views on Avigdor Lieberman. You receive the standard tetchy reply: “He’s a racist thug and he doesn’t represent me”. And in politically-correct Britain, nobody can afford to be linked with any man bearing that label. So much so, that in researching this piece, no British Jew would let me publish their name.
Even during my recent trip to Israel, I had the same response from Anglo Jews. Shoshana from Tel Aviv (not her real name) told me they couldn’t talk about him in London. She told me that all her friends vote for Lieberman, but when they’re back in the UK they lie to their families so as not to create arguments during their visits. The party was not some lunatic fringe but had behind it a solid swathe of Israeli voters: in the last elections it had gained 15 seats in the Knesset. “They just don’t understand – they’re not in possession of the true facts,” Shoshana told me. When I interviewed other Israelis, whether from wealthy North Tel Aviv or from Ashdod in the South, 2 out of 3 told me that they wished there were more outspoken politicians like ‘Yvette’, an incongruously feminine nickname for a former night-club bouncer. It was only the Ashkenazi elderly that I interviewed who were still supporting Labour.
Alon Grea, an Israeli living in London, explained to me: “Avigdor Lieberman doesn’t fit into the Israeli Leftwing establishment frame. They absolutely hate him. One of the things they despise the most is that he’s from the galut (diaspora). A Russian immigrant who speaks with a thick accent. These leftwing liberals, if they are so liberal, they should accept him even if they don’t agree with him. He is not an extremist. He talks about exchange of land, but the leftwing try to portray him as a racist who is trying to kill and deport Arabs. They look down on the Russians like they used to the Sephardim. “
Yisrael Beytenu’s plan calls for the drawing of Israel’s borders, placing areas like in the eastern Galilee, heavily populated by Arabs, in the future Palestinian state. His party has also, for the first time in Israel’s history, passed a law for civil unions between people of ‘no religion’ and ease the currently overly-stringent conversion process. For the first time in Israel’s history, a Yisrael Beytenu-led Ministry of Foreign Affairs is pursuing an active foreign and diplomatic policy on behalf of those Israelis who fled Arab and Muslim lands and their descendants, who make up around half of Israel’s Jewish population as I previously reported here.
So is the Jewish press that demonises him in the UK hiding facts from us?
I first became suspicious of the lack of information two and half years ago in the Jewish Chronicle. In the comments sections of their blogs, a reader was posting parts of the Yisrael Beytenu (YB) manifesto that were relevant to the discussion. Later on in the day the newspaper removed them. In the comments thread, I asked why they were being removed – couldn’t we hear all sides of the argument? Their response was to remove my post. The next day the YB comments were reposted and an hour later removed again. I wrote again to know why JC readers weren’t allowed to read them. Not only did this publication remove my comment, but they actually blocked my IP address, making it impossible to access their site. The Jewish Thought Police are alive and patrolling!
I wanted to find out for myself whether this man fitted the evil, far-right racist description given to him by his many enemies. So I decided to go along to the controversial JNF event in the London Jewish heartland of Hendon that would be hosting him.
The anti-Israel community caught wind of it the night before and arranged for a hasty demonstration in this leafy Jewish suburb in North West London. Over the last 20 years, Hendon has taken on a distinctly Sephardi style, with the old salt beef bars in Brent Street being overtaken by Iraqi and Moroccan-Jewish restaurants. There are a dozen or so small, vibrant Sephardi synagogues in the area. (Readers of my blog will know that I’m writing a book on the subject). These are unpretentious communities that proudly display their love of Israel. Many have close family living in Israeli border towns like Ashdod that have recently been hit by rocket attacks from Gaza.
Hendon is more used to Purim parades in their streets than processions of some 60 keffiyah- wearing yobs carrying Palestinian flags and shouting ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, an offensive and anti-Semitc slogan.
The British Israel Coalition had arranged a counter demonstration, which started off with a crowd of 50-odd supporters. However, as the residents heard the commotion and word spread amongst the cafés and synagogues in the area, a crowd of 300+ streamed on to the streets to let their voices be heard loud and clear to ‘drive these fascists out of Hendon’. You can read here Richard Millett’s report. But not everyone agrees: Adam Langleben, the vice chair of Hendon Labour Party said of the pro-Israel demonstrators “I found them embarrassing for me as a Jew”. His report as a bystander is here. The British Israel Coalition has officially distanced itself from anyone shouting racist abuse in the pro-Israel crowd.
Once I’d passed through the strict security to enter the venue, I waited in anticipation for Lieberman to arrive. The most demonised Jew in the world. He certainly has a presence around him and his massive build can appear quite thuggish. He’s definitely the sort of person you’d want at the door to keep out undesirables from the party. But when he came to speak, there was none of the fire and brimstone that I’d been imagining. His opponents inside and outside Israel had every right to criticise him: but he expected them to show support for the democratically elected government of Israel. In his thick Russian accent, he said that Jewish minorities in the Diaspora were so loyal to their countries of birth that Jewish soldiers fought each other in WWI (I know this from my own grandfather). The Yisrael Beytenu party was not full of rightwing Russians: it also had a Druze MK. He felt it was quite reasonable to expect all Israeli citizens to show loyalty to their country of birth and fulfill their obligations to it, but there is a disconnect between Israel’s Arab citizens and their rabble-rousing representatives. He talked about moving borders, not transferring people. Iran was not just a danger to Israel – it had violated all standards of international behaviour. It was meddling in Bahrain, Yemen and South America and the international community should not be engaging with it.
I had expected from amongst the mixed audience of over 150 people, the stalwarts of the community and many who have been very critical of him, that there would be those who were going to be contesting his views. But they remained silent. The audience had all felt the hatred outside on the streets of Hendon, and somehow it felt rather good having “Yvette” at Israel’s door.
Michelle Huberman can be contacted at michellehuberman@mac.com
@ dweller:
We can’t know that any of the actions by the British soldiers would not have been the same. The british killed innocent civilians in reprisals which probably increased anti British sentiment amongst the Yishuv and even some support for the Irgun as a consequence. This does not disprove in any way the contention of Begin that the British as a consequence never executed members of the underground after the hangings. The guilt and blame lies at the door of the British only. They were the enemy occupiers with no legal standing or rights. They were the enemy of all Jews and I would not have given them an option. I would have done to them much worse than Begin or the LECHI did to them.
My Book and Your Book have different concepts of Mercy and treatment of enemies.
Irony is that you Christians ignore what your Book says and the Jews ignore the principles of their Book and have largely adopted what Your Book preaches.
@ dweller:
But he didn’t think it was a misstep and neither do I. Your arguments are nothing but a lame attempt to apply your own quite stupid ideological morality on others and not just for Begin. I call it the world according to dweller syndrome.
You use majority opinion when it serves your debating purposes but when in disagreement chastise that same majority for being too rigid and not able to think outside the box which you claim as a dweller superior even mystical trait.
You bent yourself into a pretzel trying to prove that the result of the Brits execution was not as Begin claimed and have invented straw-man arguments where you can’t prove your contentions and specious assertions.
What would you know what is worthy or unworthy of Jews? You are a Jesus believer!!!The last time I looked that same majority you use in defense of your position is against and have always rejected your savior. Funny thing about using majority opinions to defend arguments. 😉
I agree with all you said except their innocence and that they were murdered in cold blood. They had a trial by their enemies and were found guilty. They were executed just as their superiors and countryman executed Jews. They were representatives of the enemy of the Jews and their fate rested on the actions taken against Jews.
Begin invoked a very Jewish principle Mida Neged Mida!!!!
‘When you go forth to battle against your enemies’ (Deut. 20:1)… What is meant by ‘against your enemies‘? G-d said, ‘Confront them as enemies. Just as they show you no mercy, so should you not show them mercy.’”
We see that G-d has declared war on the wicked and described Himself as Master of war, and that we must emulate Him in war the way we emulate His mercy and kindness, etc. ‘The L-rd is the Master of war, Hashem is His name’ Who won the “covenant of peace,” the everlasting reward of peace, if not Pinchas? Pinchas acted zealously on G-d’s behalf, taking G-d’s revenge, and becoming the first mashuach milchamah, or kohen anointed to lead the nation in war (Deut. 20:2-4). Yet G-d said (Num. 25:12), “Tell him that I have given him My covenant of PEACE.”
Here we have a reward well-suited to the deed. Precisely he who gives up his peace and tranquility, devoting himself to G-d’s battle and to taking G-d’s revenge, merits everlasting peace.
@ yamit82:
I’m not even sure it WAS the hangings that directly brought the change in Brit behavior. Both you and Begin overlook the immediate aftermath:
Rather than the sergeants’ hangings directly bringing about the administrative volte face, it seems more likely that HMG realized in the aftermath that it was losing control of its own personnel in Palestine — this at a time when the UK public at home was growing weary of a Mandate that was leading to actively loathsome behavior on the part of its own constituted officials.
I’d love to get a look at the exchange of memos that undoubtedly occurred between Whitehall & Jerusalem after those Administration reprisals (though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they’re still classified, even this long afterward).
@ yamit82:
My last post ran long (which is likely why it ended up in limbo, and is STILL there, as of today) — so I’m offering it again, here: in 2 parts.
Yes, but it was you who CITED it
— as (presumably) something worthy of the Right.
Yes.
No.
He could have realized that that particular threat represented a misstep, and governed himself accordingly.
It was a wicked, hateful act — unworthy of Jews.
‘Glorious,’ my royal Zionist arse!
Those two boys were innocent of anything more than being soldiers on leave, who chanced to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They were set up, taken hostage, then murdered in cold blood.
And the overwhelming majority of the Yishuv — while otherwise supporting Etzel — REJECTED this terrible deed, root and branch.
That was Begin’s recurrent claim. (But then, what else could he say after the fact?)
Yet neither you NOR he have any way of knowing that it was the only course of action that would have ‘worked’ — if in fact it was what worked (see below).
Then too, perhaps cutting off the finger of a hostage each day & delivering it to the Commandant’s office by courier — and then a toe each day, then the limbs, a joint at a time — might have gotten action also.
Then other ‘appendages.’ (The Soviets did it, and it ‘worked.’) Would that have been okay too , if it ‘worked’?
How about their families? — are they off-limits?
A three-year-old child?
— one appendage at a time?
in the immediate presence of his or her parents?
Or, even. . . . (what are the limits to your imagination?)
Shall I go on?
@ yamit82:
Yes, but it was you who CITED it
— as (presumably) something worthy of the Right.
Right.
Wrong.
He could have realized that that particular threat represented a misstep.
It was a wicked, hateful act — unworthy of Jews.
‘Glorious,’ my arse.
Those two boys were innocent of anything more than being soldiers on leave, who chanced to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They were taken hostage, then murdered in cold blood.
And most of the Yishuv — while otherwise supporting Etzel — REJECTED this terrible deed, root and branch.
That was Begin’s recurrent claim — but then, what else could he say?
But neither you NOR he have any way of knowing that it was the only course of action that would have ‘worked’.
Then too, perhaps cutting off the finger of a hostage each day & delivering it to the Commandant’s office by courier — and then a toe each day, then the limbs, a joint at a time — might have gotten action also.
Then other ‘appendages.’ [The Soviets did it, and it ‘worked.’] Would that have been okay too , if it ‘worked’?
How about their families? — are they off-limits?
A three-year-old child?
— one appendage at a time?
in the immediate presence of his or her parents?
Shall I go on?
I’m not even sure that it was the hangings themselves that directly brought the change in Brit behavior. Both you and Begin overlook the immediate aftermath:
Rather than the sergeants’ hangings directly bringing about the administrative volte face, it seems more likely that HMG realized in the aftermath that it was losing control of its own personnel in Palestine — and this at a time when the UK public at home was growing weary of a Mandate that was leading to actively loathsome behavior on the part of its own constituted officials.
I’d love to get a look at the exchange of memos that undoubtedly occurred between Whitehall & Jerusalem after those Administration reprisals (though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they are still classified, even this long afterward).
@ dweller:
You should take up your criticism with the Irgun, not me it was their published notice.
They were abducted to put pressure on the Brits not to execute ETZEL prisoners. When the Brits ignored the threats to their own and went ahead with the executions, Begin had no choice but to follow through with his threats. It was a glorious act and one of the most moral acts of the Irgun because after the two Brits were executed the Brits took the Irgun seriously and never again executed Jews. That act saved many Jews from being executed.
@ ArnoldHarris:
The only hangings or floggings by the underground (of which I’m aware) were Irgun actions, not Lehi — and they occurred in ’46 & ’47: several years after the split. So it’s not likely that it would’ve been Eldad who ordered them.
The specific order to carry out the hangings (of the 2 British sergeants taken as hostages) was given by Irgun Chief of Staff Chaim Landau to the local (Netanya-area) Irgun commander, Avraham Assaf.
IN 1938, at the 3rd Betar Conference in Warsaw, when Jabotinsky attacked the militant stance of Begin (then Poland’s Betar leader), Scheib spoke in Begin’s defense.
The following year, with the opening of WW2, Scheib & Begin escaped together from Warsaw.
There’s a story that when Begin was arrested by the Soviet NKVD (thence to wind up at the Pechora labor camps), it was right in the midst of a chess game with Scheib ; however, I don’t know if there’s any truth to it.
(After all, what would’ve become of Scheib then? Surely, if ONE were detained, then they BOTH would have been?)
Interestingly, Elyakim haEtzni was actually Haganah during the pre-State period.
After Independence he abandoned his Mapai Party membership over govt corruption. He was an MK [Techiya Party] for a few years during the early 90’s — pre-Oslo. As you note, he played a role in the founding of “Kiryat Arba” at Hevron (beginning a couple of years before you met him). So far as I’m aware, he still lives there — altho, if so, he must be getting on in years.
I’m not aware of him ever having been under actual sentence of death, but he certainly was detained/etc by the Brits on more than one occasion.
He was arrested while fleeing from a TA apartment (he was injured in a fall while trying to shinny down a water drain pipe leading from an upper floor), and was then held in the Jerusalem prison in a body cast. He continued his political & philosophical writing from Cell 18 of the hospital ward at Jerusalem Central Prison. Eventually he healed enough to escape while on a visit to a dentist’s clinic, from which several Lehi compariots spirited him away. Whether that involved breaching any walls, though, I don’t know.
@ yamit82:
Bullshit.
A retaliatory act is PRECISELY what it was.
They were not kidnapped & abducted for any of the ‘reasons’ cited in that hokey Bill-of-Particulars.
They were seized expressly so as to have a bargaining chip to use against the Mandate Administration.
When the Administration pigheadedly refused to refrain from its planned bestiality, IZL retaliated in kind.
Stink for stink.
And to this day, the memory of it STILL stinks.
A conspicuous blot on perhaps the cleanest fought of all the anti-colonialist struggles of the postwar era.
@ BlandOatmeal:
The only thing you might have in common with Lieberman is your waistline.
Lieberman wants to give up parts of the Land of Israel and the State of Israel to adjust the borders removing some but not all Arab towns and villages from Israeli sovereignty. All of the Arabs in the North South would remain. He would divide Jerusalem and have NATO placed between Israel and the Palestinians. He is even more corrupt than BB, Olmert, Barak and Sharon.
Anyone who favors Lieberman as PM should have heir heads examined.
@ James B – Montreal:
Thank you phoenix
.
What a CROCK OF SHIT! Wars are serious business. People get killed wounded for life, lose limbs etc. Ramat HaSharon like every other community in Israel send their husbands sons/daughters and grandsons/granddaughters to the IDF. Do you really believe that property values are more important to the residents of RH or any other community in Israel who send their loved ones to fight our wars?
When you voice such stupidity and militancy from the comfort of your home in Canada?, It rings in my tin ear of advice given by cowards who are willing to risk and sacrifice us here doing the fighting and dying by foreign cowards who would crap in their pants if they heard a firecrackers explode near them.
That said, the rule should be, when attacked we take territory and not give it up but do not initiate wars of expansion however just our cause.
I’ve been to the country north of upstate NY, so what? There is no western country I can think of as Liberal as Canada and Canadian Liberals make the American Democratic party and the NYT seem right wing in comparison.
NO transfer of any Jewish land!
Stop aiding and abetting the Muslim conquest of Israel and the Free World!
NOT ONE INCH of Free World Jewish land to the enemies of Jews and all non-Muslims!
It seems that the The British Jews are perfect dhimmies. They are used to their ghetto-like mentality. The Ashkenazim (Anglo and German) have a complex of superiority. They are more and more out of the loop but have still a lot of money.
Lieb says it the way it is, not just the way he sees it. Israel needs many more upfront people like him.
2000 years of submission is more than enough,
@ James B – Canada:
The Golan Heights has already been annexed.
Thank you phoenix
I should add that those who are most against the Sinai re-invasion are those Israelis who own very expensive homes in Ramat Gan, etc. Their properties will decrease in value. Over the long term, north of 30% or much more than that. The Sinai is massive territory, great views of the landscape and the coast.
I have been there and Israel needs a buffer zone between her people and the muslim jungle.
@ James B – Canada:
god, your posts are a breath of fresh air, james!
i would modify, though, your #4 point about gaza! “they must go!” (rabbi m. kahane) rebuild gush katif!!!
Bland Oatmeal is too liberal for my taste. I thought I was reading Ha’aretz.com or Jpost.com singles dating section.
1) Annex Golan Heights
2) Invade and Annex Sinai
3) Tell King Andullah of Jordan the facts of life; either we kill you and your family or take in the Palies. If he says no, kill him and some of his top generals, open the gates to
Jordan and tell? Palies to leave. Any leftie Israelis are welcome to join them
4) As for Gaza, unplug the hydro electric power or smoke them out to run to Egypt or ignore them. Because they will be surrounded.
Best thing is to wait until this ” grexit” occurs, or when this financial kabuki play finally ends and western europe is in such financial anarchy, that no one there gives a damn to do anything. As for the USA, it will be going KFC soon – extra crispy, so I do not expect much from them. If the new USS Liberty comes a snoopin’, blow it up again. The Med Sea is not their private swimming pool.
Israel, keep doing the military R&D, do not listen to the Jew haters running Brussels or London and wait like a panther …
I think they confused Lieberman with me 🙂
I would kill or deport any Arab who opposed Jewish settlement of Israel. Racist? I have no idea what that means, out of the mouth of an Englishman
The reason the people in the EU (or at least Western Europe), as well as the leftist media elite in America hate him is that he has the gall to tell those idiots to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.
He thinks Western Europe is a lost cause, run by unrepentant Nazis, and he is right.
His legacy is that he has gotten Israel to move its foreign policy away from trying to win the approval of these Western European Marxist morons (no contradiction with calling them Nazis, the differences between them are minor) who think that the only place a Jew belongs is in an oven.
Israel now makes deals with South Korea and India and China, and the Western Europeans can go fornicate themselves.
Back in summer 1974, I spent just about every Shabat afternoon studying real Zionism with the man who ordered those hangings and floggings, Dr Israel Eldad. His birth-name was Israel Scheib, and he was a tough and self-reliant Galiczianer who learned pitiless war as well as formal authentic Judaism. After each week’s study period, I played chess with him. But that man had a brain as well-arranged as a steel trap. I never beat him, but I learned a few chess moves I had never heard of, every time I played him.
I had been introduced to him by one of his friends, haEtzni, who I think was active later with the Jewish community in Hevron. The two of them had talked to a group of students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in a dormitory one evening. I was there, and one of my comments seemed to have interest Eldad.
Eldad had been under sentence of death from the British occupation authorities, but as I understand it, some of Lehi’s tough-guys blew the prison walls and took him into hiding, thereby cheating the British Empire’s hangman. He was physically small compared with me or most other Americans, and 64 years old that year, but the toughness in the fiber of his soul flashed from his eyes, and his demeanor was that of a man who takes a warrior’s pride in strength and victory. We need a world filled with just that kind of Jew, fighters who never quit and never show fear — the real McCoy, as we would have called him around the streets of Chicago in the 1940s.
Along with that of the Rav Meir Kahane, I honor the memory of Israel Eldad, and I will do so as long as I live.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
1,000 Jews Vs. The British Empire: The Story Of Lehi: An Interview with Historian Zev Golan
By: Elliot Resnick
Liebermn is as much a right winger as is Peres. He might be anti Arab, but if they had behaved themselves and shown loayalty to the Jewish State he would not have much of a platform or following. The Likud today would be left of the Labor (Mapai) party in 1980. BB and the Likud are no longer right wing nationalists but trying to be more Catholic than the Pope, (more leftist than the Left).
Just read Zev Golans Stern: the Man and His Gang
These were right wingers:
In December 1946, A court sentenced two Irgun youths to a long term in prison and 18 strokes of the birch for taking part in bank robberies. In reprisal the Irgun kidnapped four British soldiers and a Major of the 6th Airborne Division and flogged them.
Lieberman a right winger ? LOL 🙂
Ashkenazi = ash kan nazi
I wanted to create a trend but it needs more time to catch on. Light skinned Jews think they are like ordinary white euros and limousine liberals. My family finds him to be ” over the top”. Meanwhile not one of these suck ups to the Dems can write their names in Hebrew even at gun point.
Frightened little nebishes. Well he does represent me to a certain extent. Where I disagree with Lieberman is that I would not surrender any Jewish land. So he is actually more liberal than me.