All the arguments for de-legitimizing Israel are fair game. Not for the supposed and ostensible reasons we usually hear, excessive violence, and racism for example, but because the country is totally inept, and for its own security and those of its citizens, to save it from itself it must be abandoned. Yes, it does echo something Kafka once wrote. But the poor guy was lied to by Max Brod, who was in turn screwed by the state, as they confiscated Kafka’s works which had been gifted to a certain woman in his will. So, in a sense, Kafka has been found back in prison. Maybe the whole country is simply a prison. This whole effort at nationhood to knock off the yoke and escape the ghetto through the most tenuous links with the Liberal Enlightenment and Social democracy has ended up at one big ghetto.
But in Israel, no matter how corrupt, and crooked and unjust, it is always holy. Here, the divine and the mythical serves as the basis for the political struggle, and the messianic by pretense and accident, necessarily opposes and collides with the law. The law, rather than implementing justice, is just another arm in the the violence which instituted the law in the first place. So, mythical, violent contentions always oppose divine ones. Even crime is divine; beyond the revolutionary demands for justice which are naive and should be abandoned; the new laws, conceived as being more just are based on equally violent contentions…
( see link at end)…Ami Popper, who is serving seven life sentences for the murder of seven Palestinians, was moved yesterday from Maasiyahu Prison to Ayalon Prison due to his apparent harassment of former President Moshe Katsav, who is serving time for rape and other sexual offenses in the same cell block where Popper was incarcerated.
Also, Katsav appealed on Monday to President Shimon Peres for a full pardon.
In recent months, Popper’s influence in the Maasiyahu cell block has grown. His stature rose after former MK Shlomo Benizri left the prison. Popper apparently took steps to “settle accounts” with Katsav, who refused to grant him a pardon during his term as president and who is serving time in the next cell….
—But he then reminds his
readers of the long track record of the Israeli political and media
establishment (meaning the Left) in bashing Katsav. It began when
Katsav first beat Shimon Peres in the 2000 vote for the Presidency.
Yemini recalls how numerous leftwing journalists (including leftwing
ultras Gideon Levy and Ron Myberg) in Israel compared the Katsav vote
victory to the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. Amos Oz published at the time
a particularly offensive piece in Yediot Ahronot about the Katsav
victory, as the triumph of unenlightened religious people and
conservatives, and as the impudence of the “Second Israel” (meaning
lower-income Mizrachi and working-class Jews). Israel’s leading
comedy television program, “Eretz Nehederet,” essentially the Israeli
“Saturday Night Live” (but not aired on Saturday night) then
“Palin-ed” Katsav, turning him into their favorite butte of mocking.—Read More:http://stevenplaut.blogspot.ca/2010_12_01_archive.html
The most humiliating incident occurred on Rosh Hashanah eve. Katsav sat next to other inmates at a festive table, but Popper demanded that he get up and eat alone at a separate table. Israel’s former president acceded to the demand made by a convicted mass murderer.
There were other incidents of harassment. Popper and his confederates took from Katsav an orthopedic chair which Benizri had left behind when he was freed. More recently, the Popper gang smeared substances taken from a mousetrap on the walls of Katsav’s cell.
Katsav relayed several complaints about this humiliation and harassment to Maasiyahu’s wardens. Popper was warned that should he continue to bully the former president, he would be transferred to another jail. On Monday, after wardens saw that the harassment was continuing, they ordered Popper to gather his belongings for the transfer to Ayalon Prison….
— The three justices who just found Katsav guilty (they
included two women and the radical outspoken Arab judge George Kara)
can claim all they want that they were not influenced by the media
frenzy and assault against Katsav (writes Yemini), but their denials
are not persuasive.
Yemini then reminds his readers how the whole prosecution case got
started. It has dragged on for so many years that most have
forgotten. It began when Katsav himself filed a complaint against the
woman (still nameless and referred to in the media as “A”), who had
been his Office Manager, when she had wanted to return to her previous
job and demanded back pay. She was extorting and threatening Katsav
and he filed a formal complaint. When Katsav refused he demands, Ms.
“A” hired herself a PR man and started issuing media attacks against
Katsav.
That was when the first claims of sexual harassment were made by
her. Note – they were being made by the same woman demanding to
return to employment with Katsav! —Read More:http://stevenplaut.blogspot.ca/2010_12_01_archive.html image:http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/digital-art-masterpieces-ray
The Israel Prison Service says the transfer of inmates between prisons is a r
ne procedure, and that it “does not intend to relate to specific incidents.”Ami Popper is serving seven consecutive life sentences for the murder of seven Palestinian workers in 1990. Popper, who was 21 at the time, arrived at a Rishon Letzion junction wearing military trousers he stole from his brother, an IDF soldier. He demanded that several Arab workers form a line, and show him their identity documents. A few moments later, he pointed a Galil rifle (also taken from his brother ) at them and fired 140 bullets. Seven Palestinians were killed on the spot and 11 were badly wounded. Popper fled and seven months after the massacre, he confessed to the crime. He said he did it because he was sexually assaulted when he was 13 years old by an Arab man.
As for Katsav’s request for pardon, it comes just 10 months after he started serving his seven-year jail sentence at Maasiyahu following his conviction on two rape counts and other sex offenses. His request for pardon, which is considered unlikely to be granted, was submitted to Peres by Katsav’s wife Gila….
— “What do you want to know now?” asks the doorkeeper; “you are insatiable.” “Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man, “so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?” The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”—Kafka, Before the Law, end.—Image:http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=offtopic&action=print&thread=1341
Katsav contends in the request that he did not receive a fair trial because the media, which covered the scandal with blinding intensity for five years, made an impartial trial impossible on account of their bias against him. Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/after-bullying-katsav-jewish-terrorist-ami-popper-moved-to-new-prison.premium-1.470211
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…The plea bargain offered Katsav, and rejected by him, would have involved no jail time and a mere concession by Katsav that he had sexually harassed or misbehaved. The prosecutors themselves did not believe “A”. Their written response to the complaints about the plea offer remains classified but is thought to include detailed information on why the complaints about rape by “A” were not credible and why “A” herself was not a credible plaintiff. In any case, the whole prosecution case was full of inconsistencies, contradictions about facts and dates, and other problems….
…Had he argued in court that at his age most men are physically incapable of carrying out a rape, he also might have been cleared. (I assume his machismo did not let him raise that claim!) Instead, he is now probably to be sent to hard prison time with actual criminals. The Hebrew university leftwing sociology professor accused by several students of raping them was never prosecuted and keeps his university job. The Haaretz journalist who taught at Tel Aviv University and was accused of rape was never prosecuted.
One can only imagine what this is doing to Katsav’s wife and children. One can imagine how serious is the risk now that he could take his own life. Read More:http://stevenplaut.blogspot.ca/2010_12_01_archive.html
Lyonel Feininger painting. —Rabbi Wolpo wrote: “In a time of thorough investigations which you are undergoing regarding the issue of illegal annexation of property in your land in Moshav Amikam… Our Sages of Blessed Memory say ‘There is a judge and there is judgment’ and the phrase ‘an eye for an eye’ takes on a special meaning in light of these events you are going through. The slogan you came up with in (Ariel Sharon’s) ranch forum – ‘a solution to each settler’ – might have helped you in Moshav Amikam but did nothing for thousands of our brothers who where the salt of the earth, valorous, the cream of the crop of Israel society.”
In the letter, the designated IDF chief of staff is asked “to have the courage to forgive our deported brothers who were cast off to caravilla camps.” —Read More:http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4018993,00.html
Corruption in Israel is always holy, like the jackie Mason routine about the Jewish truck driver, which takes the mundanity and banality of the work to revelatory and sanctified levels….
( see link at end)…released former cabinet minister Shlomo Benizri, who served two-and-a-half years of a four-year sentence for conspiracy to commit a crime, accepting bribes, breach of trust and obstruction of justice.
The former Shas politician was due to be paroled in about a month, after serving twothirds of his sentence….Shortly after his release, Benizri gave an interview to the Kol Harama radio station in which he compared his time in prison to that of former Hamas captive Gilad Schalit….
“When I was in prison… I know this may sound pathetic, but the image I saw before me, other than my family, was Gilad Schalit….I understood his pain, I understood how he felt and his frustration, and I understood the pain, only that I think mine is greater,” Benizri said, clarifying that his pain was in some ways greater because it was caused by his fellow Jews….Benizri said Thursday marked the end of “one of the greatest injustices committed in this country,” and that he was the victim of a “price-tag” attack carried out by the justice system…Read More:http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=260063
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