Danny is Dead

by Cosmic X

Did you hear the news?
Danny is dead,
Tell the Jews,
He was sick in the head.

That's right my friend,
He went out of his mind,
Put his life to an end,
To get out of the bind.

It's such a shame,
Because he loved life,
But no one's to blame,
You can ask his wife.

Search the law,
Rant and rave,
Hem and haw,
Where to dig his grave.

Wrap him in white,
Lower him down,
Before the fall of night,
Cover him with ground.

He's on his way,
To Olam HaBa,
Yitgadal VeYitkadash,
Shmei Rabba.

Spend wisely your wealth,
Watch your behind,
Guard well your health,
And don't lose your mind.

Lecturer That Exposed the Nefarious "New Israel Fund" Gets Fired By Hebrew U.

Arutz 7 reports:

Hebrew University lecturer Dr. Ran Baratz, a highly respected and very popular lecturer in the university's Department of Philosophy, was recently informed that he would not be employed at the institution in the next academic year. 150 students from all parts of the political spectrum have signed a petition calling on the university to reconsider its decision and keep Baratz on its staff, and 50 of them sent letters to the same effect.

The Knesset's Education Committee will convene a special session to discuss the Baratz affair. Committee Chairman MK Zevulun Orlev (Jewish Home) said that the university's decision was “strange” and said that a “dark cloud” hangs over the university.

Many of Dr. Baratz's supporters claim that the university's decision is motivated by the leftist establishment's desire for revenge against Baratz, who is a research fellow at the conservative Shalem Institute and co-authored a 2003 report on the New Israel Fund. The report served as the basis for Zionist student group Im Tirtzu's report on the Fund, which has created international uproar.

Baratz also contributed to a more recent Im Tirtzu report concerning the silencing of Zionist opinions by leftist academics. He teaches at the Jewish Statesmanship Center for Strategic Planning, and regularly writes in daily Yisrael HaYom, and in the internet magazine Maraah, which describes itself as “politically incorrect.”

Interestingly, however, a Facebook group formed in support of Baratz was created by Yoni Buchsbaum, a student who is described by lecturers as a Communist. In his comments he made on the group's homepage, Buchsbaum confirmed that he belongs to the political left and explained that the issue at hand is not political, but relates to the quality of instruction in the university.

The Department of Philosophy denied there were any political considerations behind the decision to discontinue Baratz's employment. It said that the university had issued a tender for a permanent position on the Department's staff and that based on purely academic criteria, three different committees preferred another candidate over Baratz.

A co-author of the report on the NIF, Dr. Moshe Ifargan, appeared on Channel 1 television Wednesday and said that even if another candidate was more suited for the permanent post, the university could have kept Baratz on its staff in his present status as a teaching fellow. Baratz's doctoral thesis was cited for “special excellence,” he noted, and the fact that so many students had come out in support of Baratz was testimony to his talent as a lecturer.

Ifargan said that a senior professor had told him that another excellent lecturer was denied a post in the Department of Philosophy last year only because he resided in a community within Judea and Samaria.

"Disengagement" Soldiers Repenting

The Besheva magazine has published some interesting stories lately. Last week, the story was about a secular soldier that took part in the disengagement even though she did not want to. She regrets what she did and is now religious. This week, the story is about a secular soldier that refused to take part in the disengagement. She also became religious and now lives "over the green line".

BTW, the articles are in Hebrew.

The "New Israel Fund Desert Seminar from Hell"

More on the nefarious New Israel Fund:

A new chapter in the New Israel Fund controversy was written this week, as a left-of-center activist related her harrowing experience in an NIF seminar that brought her to tears. The NIF, which purports to be a pro-Israel fund, has been fire since a damning report published in February by a Zionist student group exposed its aid to groups that slandered the IDF following the 'Cast Lead' Gaza counter-terror operation.

The letter from the activist to NIF CEO Daniel Sokatch was first published in Hebrew by journalist Ben-Dror Yemini in his blog on the Maariv-NRG website, and later translated into English.

The activist, who identified herself by the pseudonym Shlomit, told a story that appeared to corroborate Im Tirtzu's depiction of the NIF as a sinister radical group that hides behind a facade of pro-Israel Zionist morality.

Shlomit, 36 and a mother of three, described herself as “religious left-wing” and said she voted for dovish-religious Meimad in the last elections. A former spokesperson for an organization promoting women’s rights, she is currently employed in an organization that helps the disabled.

She described herself as “very connected” to Shatil, an organization that operates under the auspices of the New Israel Fund, mentoring NIF-supported groups and helping them apply for funding from other sources. “Within my professional framework, I have always been aided and assisted by the services of 'Shatil' from the outset,” she explained.

“The report of the 'Im Tirzu' movement created somewhat of a shockwave amongst me and my colleagues,” Shlomit elaborated. “On the one hand, we thought that if there was an element of truth in it then the Fund should do some soul-searching and we assumed they would. However, we were not prepared to cast aspersions on our loyalty to the Fund and to Shatil.”

She was offered a scholarship for “a week in the desert along with fellow activists, with professional guidance from America,” and saw it as “an opportunity for empowerment and growth.”

Other participants hailed from Amnesty International, Sikkuy (The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel), AJEEC (Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation), Neve Shalom, Itach (Women Lawyers for Social Justice), Moussawa (Advocacy for Arab Citizens in Israel) and additional groups.

Feeling “so elated and grateful that they were willing to invest in me in such a way,” she accepted.

"That turned out to be a mistake,” she wrote Sokatch.

“It has now been two weeks since the program ended and I am still struggling to get back into routine both at home and at work. The level of the shake-up I experienced was so powerful that it led me to write this letter especially to you. I found myself in the desert under laboratory conditions, cut off from the world, cut off from Internet, with Palestinian and Jewish human rights activists who negated the State of Israel's existence. With people who want to annihilate the State without ruling out violent means, who believe that the State of Israel was born out of sin and who apologize for its existence, who loathe Israel and its symbols, who justify harming Israel, its soldiers and all its institutions, who devote their lives and efforts towards turning Israel into a bi or multi-national country. In fact the above is inaccurate. These people are fighting for one nationality alone – Palestinian. These same people oppose communal or civil national service for Arabs within the State. They also equate Israel's actions with those of Nazi Germany.”

Read the rest!

Obama Doesn't Fool Us

Jpost reports that "Israelis not swayed by Obama":

US President Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to the people of Israel last week – when he hosted Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for a positive meeting at the White House and gave his first interview as president to an Israeli television station – were not very successful, according to a Smith Research poll for The Jerusalem Post.

After Obama’s earlier meetings with Netanyahu were portrayed as adversarial, Obama made a point of treating the prime minister with the utmost respect last week, accompanying him to his car and constantly commending him in particular and Israelis in general during his press conference with Netanyahu on Tuesday, and his interview with Channel 2 anchor Yonit Levy two days later.

But what was widely described as a “charm offensive” did not immediately sway many Israelis in his favor, the JPost/Smith poll indicates. There was only a 1 percentage point rise in Israelis who consider the US administration headed by Obama to be more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian since the last such poll was taken in March.

When asked whether they saw Obama’s administration as more pro-Israel, more pro- Palestinian or neutral, just 10 percent of Israeli Jews said more pro-Israel, 46% said more pro-Palestinian, 34% said neutral and 10% did not express an opinion.

The poll of 515 Jewish Israelis, representing a statistical sample of the adult Jewish population, was taken on Monday through Wednesday and had a 4.4 percentage point margin of error.

No Mr. B.O., it has nothing to do with your middle name. It has everything to do with your dismal "Cairo Speech", with your moral equivalency, with your courting the despots.

I hope that America gets rid of you real soon!