Laor's Looney Left Lashing

My Right Word

One never knows from whence comes salvation.

In this case, a sensible contribtuion from radical poet Yitzhak Laor who doesn't yield on his anti-nationalist camp prejudices but inbetween, he has some wonderful points in these excerpts from:

Israel's suicidal left
Israel's suicidal left

For example:

...Every few months, the Israeli anti-Semitism comes out of the closet and takes the form of what sociologists call "moral panic," which seems to give people license to distort and confuse various issues, especially when you add the beards and traditional dress of ultra-Orthodox men into the mix. Those who are especially meticulous even make sure to give the Jew-boy in their cartoons a hooked nose. This isn't the first time this has happened...The fact that ultra-Orthodox women work in professions including teaching, social work and occupational therapy while the men are increasingly cooking and taking care of the children - even those alternative gender roles are thrown into the distorting pot of incitement.

The enlightened revolutionaries demand a single set of standards for everyone - their own standards. "How much are they costing us?" ask the learned professors, who enjoy financial benefits that no yeshiva head (or professor in France or Germany ) gets.

...It should be no surprise, then, that the periodic incitement against the Haredim leads to right-wing extremism. Incitement always ends up with adoration of the state. Thus, Meretz's efforts in the 1990s to make Ashkenazim scared of Shas gave birth to the centrist and secularist Shinui party, which swallowed up the left-wing Meretz party...It's about time that the average liberal acquired some historical perspective and asked himself, "What are we really doing when we pursue Haredim and make believe we are battling the right wing?"

There are indeed thugs in Beit Shemesh, and there are a few bus lines that have come to represent those territorial battles - characteristic of all the Jewish contradictions of the Zionist project - that exist between the Haredi minority and other parts of the population. But what does this have to do with the "social protest"?

...the question isn't who needs the constant incitement against "the Haredim." There are different interested parties at different times, and television, for its part, needs to have a steady target so it can glorify freedom of the press - and promote equality for women, as espoused by beautiful female broadcasters who will be tossed as soon as they show a few wrinkles.

The question is, how does this periodic panic succeed in becoming anti-Semitic psychosis?...


Thank you Laor.