http://www.slate.com/id/2274918
Israel's *Shabbos Goy* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbos_goy
Why America will come to regret the craven deal Obama is offering Netanyahu:
It is a national humiliation. Regardless of whether that bunch of clowns,
thugs and racists in the Israeli cabinet "approve" of the Obama/Clinton
grovel offer, there should be a unanimous demand that it be withdrawn.
By Christopher Hitchens
Slate Magazine: Nov. 15, 2010
------------------------------
Those of us who keep an eye on the parties of God are avid students of the
weekly Sabbath sermons of Rabbi Ovadia
Yosef<http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/yosef.html>.
In these and other venues, usually broadcast, this elderly Sephardic
ayatollah provides an action-packed diet that seldom disappoints. A few
months ago, he favored his devout audience with a classic rant in which he
called down curses on the Palestinian Arabs and their leaders, wishing that
a plague would come and sweep them all
away<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38901525/>.
Last month, he announced that the sole reason for the existence of
gentiles<http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=191782>was
to perform menial services for Jews: After that, he opined, their
usefulness was at an end. A huge hubbub led to his withdrawal of
the first of these diatribes. (I would be interested to know if this was on
partly theological grounds. After all, the local Palestinians may still
have some labor to perform before the divine plan is through with them.) The
second sermon, so far as I know, still stands without apology. Why on earth
should anybody care about the ravings of this scrofulous medieval figure,
who peppers his talk of non-Jews in Palestine with comparisons to snakes,
monkeys, and other lesser creations, rather as Hamas and Hezbollah refer to
the Jews [sic]? Well, one reason is that he is the spiritual leader of the
Shas Party, an important member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
coalition. Indeed, two key portfolios, of the Interior and of Construction
and Housing are held by Shas members Eli Yishai and Ariel Atias.
Yishai recently delighted the Diaspora by saying that only those Jews who
converted via the Orthodox route could carry "the Jewish
gene<http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/jewish-gene-theories-make-waves-in-germany-go-unnoticed-in-israel-1.311182>."
Atias has expressed alarm about the tendency of Israeli Arab citizens to
try to live where they please—or "spread," as he phrases it and has
advocated a policy of segregation in housing within Israel proper. He
also advocates the segregation by neighborhood of secular from Orthodox
Jews, adding that he does not wish his own children to mix with their
nonreligious
peers<http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3976199,00.html>.
It is Yishai's ministry that is famous for making announcements about new
"housing" developments outside Israel itself and in legally disputed
territory. Very often, Netanyahu himself has claimed to be taken by surprise
at these announcements, which usually involve tense areas of Jerusalem. Thus
the huge embarrassment
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/world/middleeast/10biden.html>inflicted
of Vice President Joe Biden earlier this year, when fresh
settlement construction was proclaimed in the middle of his high-level
visit. And thus the undisguised irritation of President Obama and Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton last week, when yet another round of such housing
was scheduled while Obama was in Asia and Netanyahu was in the United
States. Apparently, the latest high-level round of the peace process has
included the modest and tentative suggestion to Israel that such disclosures
be timed with greater tact and coordination in the future.
It's not only the doings of his Interior and Housing ministries of which
Netanyahu has to remain resolutely uninformed. His foreign minister is not a
part of Israel's most important external negotiation. This is perhaps just
as well, since the holder of the post, Avigdor Lieberman, regards the whole
"process" as a waste of time. He said as
much<http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Speeches+by+Israeli+leaders/2010/FM_Liberman_Addresses_UN_General_Assembly_28-Sep-2010.htm>at
the United Nations last September. It was patiently explained at that
time that Netanyahu had not been favored with advance notice of the contents
of the speech.
Lieberman has another distinction that I believe is unique. He does not live
in the country whose foreign ministry he heads. He chooses, rather, to make
his home in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, a tenaciously held outcrop
with a population of fewer than 1,000 people. The party which he heads—
Yisrael Beytenu is a nationalist rather than religious faction, but in a
competition with Rabbi Yosef for vicious anti-Arab rhetoric, it's not
immediately clear which one would emerge the winner.
Now we read
that<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/world/middleeast/15mideast.html>,
in return for just 90 days of Israeli lenience on new settlement-building
(this brief pause or "freeze" *not *to include the crucial precincts of East
Jerusalem), Netanyahu is being enticed with "a package of security
incentives and fighter jets worth $3
billion<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/world/middleeast/14mideast.html?scp=1&sq=%2522a%20package%20of%20security%20incentives%20and%20fighter%20jets%20worth%20%25243%20billion%2522&st=cse>"
and a promise that the United States government would veto any Palestinian
counterproposal at the United Nations. Netanyahu, while graciously
considering this offer, was initially reported as being unsure whether he
"could win approval for the United States deal from his Cabinet." In other
words, we must wait on the pleasure of Rabbi Yosef and Ministers Atias,
Yishai, and Lieberman, who have the unusual ability to threaten Netanyahu
from his right wing.
This is a national humiliation. Regardless of whether that bunch of clowns
and thugs and racists "approve" of the Obama/Clinton grovel offer, there
should be a unanimous demand that it be withdrawn.
The mathematics of the situation must be evident even to the meanest
intelligence. In order for any talk of a two-state outcome to be even
slightly realistic, there needs to be territory on which the second state
can be built, or on which the other nation living in Palestine can govern
itself. The aim of the extreme Israeli theocratic and chauvinist parties is
plain and undisguised: Annex enough land to make this solution impossible,
and either expel or repress the unwanted people. The policy of Netanyahu is
likewise easy to read: Run out the clock by demanding concessions for
something he has already agreed to in principle, appease the ultras he has
appointed to his own government, and wait for a chance to blame Palestinian
reaction for the inevitable failure.
The only mystery is this: Why does the United States acquiesce so wretchedly
in its own disgrace at the hands of a virtual client state? A soft version
of Rabbi Yosef's contemptuous view of the gentiles is the old concept of the
*shabbos goy*: the non-Jew who is paid a trifling fee to turn out the lights
or turn on the stove, or whatever else is needful to get around the more
annoying regulations of the Sabbath. How the old buzzard must cackle when he
sees the gentiles actually volunteering a bribe to do the lowly work! And
lowly it is, involving the tearing-up of international law and U.N.
resolutions and election promises, and the further dispossession and
eviction of a people to whom we gave our word. This craven impotence will be
noticed elsewhere, and by some very undesirable persons, and we will most
certainly be made to regret it. For now, though, the shame.
*Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for *Vanity Fair* and the Roger S.
Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution.*
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