Maariv Takes on the “Fascist Left”
By Stephen Plaut, JEWISH PRESS
This past Friday was something of a milestone.
For the first time a mainstream Israeli journalist referred to the radical Left as the “Fascist Left.”
Let me explain. First, Israeli Hebrew journalism is by and large the occupied territory of the Israeli Far Left, and under its hegemony. (The electronic media are not much better.) Haaretz is somewhat to the Left of the communist party, routinely runs Op-Eds calling for Israel’s annihilation, and the Haaretz idea of “journalistic pluralism” makes Pravda under Brezhnev look like a fountain of democratic enlightenment. Yediot Ahronot is not as extreme as Haaretz, but is almost as homogeneously and uniformly Left. Maariv is the only Hebrew daily with any semblance of pluralism and even it is more Left than Right. Nevertheless, one can find on its pages Nadav Haetzni, by far the best columnist in Israel, and he is well to the Right, plus some others who refuse to toe the political correctness line.
Maariv also is quite willing to bash the Left for its anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and Maariv editors do not spare ammo when it comes to shooting at the “Post-Zionists” and the “New Historians.” The most militant of the Maariv bashers of the anti-Israel Israeli Left are Ben-Dror Yemini and Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, both of them left of center but strongly pro-Israel and Zionists.
In his column on Friday, Yemini (whose family came from Yemen) denounces a “conference” held in Spain under the official auspices of the Spanish government, in which only leftists were invited, to search for “peace solutions” to the Middle East conflict. Except admission to the conference was reserved mainly for those who endorsed the “Palestinian Right of Return” and also who endorse the replacement of Israel by a “bi-national state,” meaning a Rwandan-style country in which the Arab majority would quickly eliminate the “problem” of the Jewish minority in a new Final Solution. Israeli and Palestinian leftists, who found the ground rules of the “debate” acceptable, participated. See this. The conference was largely the initiative of one Ofer Bronstein, an Israeli leftist who is currently promoting the division of Jerusalem but used to organize pilgrimages of leftist “rabbis” to kiss Arafat’s — er — hand. Bornstein is associated with the anti-Israel extremist and ex-Nazi Uri Avnery.
Yemini wonders why the media refer to such an atrocity as a “peace conference.” I just say DUH. Yemini also thinks there exists an insane Left and a sane Left, and in the latter he includes “Peace Now.” I do not agree that there exists a sane Left. Yemini thinks there exists a “war between Lefts.” I think there exists a war by the Left against Jews.
Be that as it may, Yemini concludes, “The battle against the fascist Left is not yet lost…. Not that the fascist Left will disappear any time soon.”
I do not share his optimism. But it really made my week that a serious respectable mainstream journalist in Israel is willing to declare that the Leftist Emperor is Naked, and the anti-Israel Left is nothing more than a Fascist Left.
