There’s just no limit to how common sense can be twisted with a few syrupy sentences.

Take for example Jibril Rajoub’s letter of thanks to International Olympics Committee president Jacques Rogge for nixing a minute’s silence to commemorate the Israeli athletes slain by Fatah terrorists 40 years ago at the Munich Olympics.

Thus wrote Fatah honcho Rajoub, chairman of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and the Palestinian Football Association: “Sport is a bridge for love, unification and for spreading peace among the nations, and it must not be a cause for divisiveness and for the spreading of racism.”

Rajoub cloyingly ticked all the de rigueur boxes of the sentimental claptrap that has become the hallmark of progressive prattle. He after all came out for “love” and “unification” and against “divisiveness” and “racism.” Continue reading →

Science attributes selective memory to defense mechanisms that generate blanks in patients’ awareness to repress trauma or humiliation. The result can manifest as lacunar amnesia, where the mind’s record-keeping is impeded by a gap (lacuna) relating to specific events.

In individual psychology these gaps form involuntarily. But in the spheres of politics and propaganda they become intentional and inherently advantageous. It pays to deliberately blot out entire episodes, decades and even eras. Cynical misrepresentation thrives on erasing contexts and causal connections.

Therefore, not forgetting what we’re encouraged to forget is critical. Continue reading →

Nineteenth-century novelist and editor of Le Figaro Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr might not be the name which instantly crops up when considering famous French literati, but he is paradoxically ever-relevant to our Israeli reality. Why? Because in January 1849 he observed in his satirical monthly Les Guêpes that “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

The English adaptation of his remark is “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

This truism is nothing less than invaluable for understanding the news which keep mercilessly bombarding us even in the midst of what’s supposed to be the sweltering summertime’s silly season. Each new headlines appear to overshadow the previous sensation. But should we be shocked in the first place? Or are we being cleverly manipulated by agenda-merchants?

If we took a leaf out of Karr’s journal, we wouldn’t have been surprised by any recent events. Insight fortified by hindsight would have steeled us against attempts to mess with our minds.

Take the sad case of Moshe Silman’s self-immolation. There are various psychiatric predispositions to dramatic suicide by fire. This has become a not uncommon form of radical political protest. Continue reading →

One of US President Barack Obama’s few admitted regrets is his inability to conjure up an instant resolution to our vexing dispute. This seems a tad odd considering that during her recent whirlwind visit to our troublesome midst, his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had waxed ecstatic about this being a time of “great change and transformation in the region.”

If things are so upbeat, why are they so intractable?

Both Obama and Clinton would be a lot less frustrated and much wiser had they turned to the late Yitzhak Shamir for clues.

He was endlessly mocked by members of our chattering classes when he stated outright that “the sea is the same sea and the Arabs are the same Arabs.” He plainly harbored no illusions in a wishy-washy world of wishful-thinking, where reality often becomes a most unwelcome intruder.

Political vogue decrees that disagreeable facts shouldn’t inconsiderately interfere with uplifting fantasy, but Shamir didn’t mind being denigrated as insular, intransigent and above all terminally uncool. Continue reading →

I couldn’t help rubbing my eyes in disbelief at the joyful celebrations which greeted former premier Ehud Olmert’s acquittal in two corruption cases and the simultaneous belittling of his conviction on a third – what his cheerleaders portrayed as the “minor” matter of breach of trust.

I couldn’t help wondering whether the same reactions could have been remotely conceivable had the defendant been named Binyamin Netanyahu.

I vividly recalled when the “breach of trust” innuendo was hurled accusingly at Netanyahu, not after a courtroom verdict but after the prosecution admitted it had no case to at all take to trial. That in no way prevented a raging tempest from ominously swirling around Netanyahu.

In diametrical discrepancy to the Olmert phenomenon, there were no orchestrated (or other) compunctions about attempts to bring down a serving prime minister at the outset of his term. Nobody dared suggest adoption of the French law which shields PMs in office from investigation and prosecution. In fact, keeping Netanyahu from his weighty duties was deemed a laudable objective.

If anything, the prevailing bon ton dictated that it was a darn shame Bibi wasn’t hauled off to court, summarily tried, convicted and ignominiously booted out. To hear trendsetters, that was what he deserved because the prosecutors, who estimated that they didn’t have the goods on him, nevertheless rebuked him for supposed intentions which they admitted they couldn’t prove. That alone sufficed to pillory Netanyahu.

And woe to anyone who dared not toe the line. Continue reading →

Dear readers,

 The Tack went on vacation.

Word is that US President Barack Obama, remarkably free from introspection and unencumbered by healthy hints of self-doubt, assiduously attributes Israeli mistrust of him to his eminently Muslim middle name. For him that encapsulates it all.

Such simplistic, one-dimensional explanations typify his neophyte missteps on the treacherous turfs of foreign policy. Obama botches things up because of his predilection for facile grand gestures, which, alas, can’t alter intricate realities. He hasn’t got an elementary handle on our Israeli outlook and is likewise unable to navigate the tempestuous Islamic sea that swirls ominously around us.

He doesn’t get us and he doesn’t get them.

Obama’s oversimplified presumptions about our perceived antipathy toward him (without stopping to consider his undisguised cold shoulder to us), are matched by oversimplified expectations that the Muslim/Arab world should cheer him. These too hinge on that eminently Muslim middle name. Being called Hussein should, in and of itself, create an affinity, make Muslims trust him and accept him as a kindred spirit.

This, of course, is every bit as simplistic as the notion that Israelis should harbor misgivings because of his name. Continue reading →

US President Barack Obama fancies himself in grand Lincolnesque terms and avers over and over that Abraham Lincoln is his model. Quite shamelessly invoking the Great Emancipator, Obama chose to kick off his first presidential bid on February 10, 2007, in Springfield, Illinois, just where Lincoln voiced his historic challenge to slavery in June 1858. And honing the comparison with a characteristic deficit of humility, after his electoral victory Obama took his family with much pomp to the Lincoln memorial.

But, for all of Obama’s blatant manipulation, it’s not that superficial similarities don’t exist. Like Honest Abe, Obama cuts a thin, lanky figure and sports oversized ears. None too- modestly Obama considers himself a master-rhetorician, a supreme crisis-manager, if not the outright shining beacon of liberty. There’s absolutely no denying that Obama is a dab hand at stagecraft and expediency.

Milking the advantageous analogy for all it’s worth, Obama’s inauguration speech theme was lifted with abundant conceit from a line in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “a new birth of freedom.” Obama just loves the word “freedom.” With theatrical flair he enunciates it liberally at every occasion.

That in mind, it would therefore be reassuring to assume that never far from Obama’s awareness is what Lincoln wrote in 1859: “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”

At this point in time the only man who denies Jonathan Pollard freedom is Obama. Continue reading →

Of late, shocked to their ultra-sensitive core, our chattering classes tug extra-hard on our national fire bells.

With exhilarated alarm, they alert us to how unloved we are overseas. Our news purveyors appear to take uncommon pleasure in driving the point home.

The other day broadcasters announced solemnly that “Germans have become markedly more critical of Israel, with 59% describing it as aggressive, according to a survey published by the Stern weekly.”

This monumentally significant poll was conducted on the eve of German President Joachim Gauck’s visit to our backwoods.

We’re definitely on a treacherous downward spiral because, as several reporters stressed, “a similar Stern survey in 2009 found that only 49% considered Israel aggressive.” Ouch! Continue reading →

Not all left-wing foreign troublemakers were barred from this country during the recent “flytilla.” Many agents provocateurs recurrently trickle in, among them rabidly anti-Israel activists in the International Solidarity Movement (with the Palestinians). Yet others enter boldly via the wide-open gates of the Law of Return because they are Jews. My cousin, whom I’ll here call Ned, is one of them. His story is of broad interest because he’s not alone.

Ned recently arrived from the US under immigrant status, though he himself probably has no clue how long he’ll stay. He isn’t employed anywhere and has no visible means of support. Someone is footing his bills. But someone always has because, to the best of my knowledge, Ned has never held any job long-term and never forged any career. There must be an organizational benefactor but I can’t say for sure.

Ned and his brother are both products of American Hashomer Hatza’ir inculcation and both remain radically tied to that pro-forma Zionist-Marxist youth movement (even though both are now thirty-something). They seem unable to outgrow the evidently addictive juvenile connection. Continue reading →