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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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February 1, 2007
by Eugene E. Narrett, Ph.D.
Moshe Katzav is the eighth President of the Modern State of Israel. Born in 1945, he came with his family to Israel in 1951 and grew up in a tent city for the immigrants then streaming in from Arab and Islamic states. He was active in the Liberal -- Herut ("Freedom") party and in that alliance became mayor of Kiryat Malachi at the age of 24. He served in the Knesset for twenty-two years, including as Deputy Prime Minister during the tenure of Benjamin Netanyahu (1996-99) before becoming President in 2000, winning what many thought was a surprising victory over long-time government insider and Labor Party chief, Shimon Peres. In July 2006 stories began appearing in the Israeli media that sexual harassment charges were being filed against Katzav. Former employees have made claims reminiscent of the Anita Hill -- Clarence Thomas matter. On Thursday, January 25 Katzav addressed the Knesset on his experience (which is not yet a case; he received copies of testimony and evidence only four days later) during the previous seven months. This essay is not about the validity of the charges made against Katzav about which very few people know the truth. It is about two major aspects of the modern State of Israel that shape its character, bear on its survival and that have been focused by Katzav's situation: the habit of the post-Zionist, anti-Jewish major media to destroy reputations, careers, and lives, entire segments of the population with little attention to the whole truth; the spread of feminist politics, particularly accusations of harassment to quickly make a lot of money, seize children, and destroy people whose removal from public life is considered expedient by the dominant powers in the State and the foreign powers that largely control it. January 25 may have been more valuable for Katzav than a day in court and part of the gist of his impassioned fifty minute address is that he has in effect already been tried by the media in the court of public opinion: "a poisonous and treacherous campaign of deception and lies," he termed it. The waterfall of stories, opinions, allegations, leaks that have identified him as an abuser and rapist have been plenteous and if not for the attack by Hamas and then Hizbollah, and the almost daily threats of annihilation from Iran he might have a reputation as a predator more heinous than Mr. Clinton. The treatment he received for seven months was similar to what the settlers of Judea and Samaria have received during the thirty-six years that it has become clear that the governments are more against than with them, all rationalized and demanded by the media as a great good and even "justice." One might say that they have sought to ethnically cleanse Katzav, the first Jew born in an Islamic state and, more pertinently, an opponent who defeated Shimon Peres. Some in the media compared the election of Katzav to the murder of Rabin, a chilling parallel that reflects the vilification and marginalization of those outside the dominant tendency in modern Israel. If you defeat post-Zionism's personal favorite you are like a murderer. In just such a spirit Prime Minister Olmert last summer stated that the Jews of Judea and Samaria were the main problem of Israel, -- this with Israel besieged by Iran, the House of Saud, Egypt and their puppets. The high drama of the address derived from Katzav speaking directly to the assembled media. The President articulated his complaint clearly: "it seems there is no need in this [matter] for proofs or for evidence; it's enough just to hear one side; my fate was decreed even before I could say one word. Not one of you [reporters] has seen one shred of evidence against me. There is no evidence against me. "But you in the press did not allow the facts to bother you. You did not stop for a second to ask yourselves if maybe the accusations are not true. Not one of you asked questions; not one of you - not one radio or TV or newspaper - did an investigative piece to see if it's true. You transgressed all journalist ethics!" They scheduled him for interviews then canceled them on a few hours notice as if he was some minor celebrity; they carried leaks of ostensibly confidential meetings with the State Attorney General who found nothing wrong with the ethnic cleansing of Jews. That's why he's in his position; that's how to get into and remain in the media, or the Foreign Service. Katzav described some details of the "witch-hunt," the "McCarthyism" and the media "lynch" to which he had been subject after going himself to the Attorney General to file a complaint against a former employee who was trying to blackmail him. "There was a woman who wrote to me who said, 'you don't know me, but eight years ago you fired me, and I know who the woman is who is accusing you - and I know that she's lying. I talked to her, and I know the truth.' We gave the letter to the police and the Prosecution, and what do the police say to her? 'We are following you with a magnifying glass, and we will get into your underwear, so watch out.' - A hareidi [orthodox] woman with three children! This is how the police talks to a woman who wants to tell the truth?! They threaten her in this way? Is this a democratic state? Are these the standards we want to have here in our country?! "Another witness was told by the police to "watch out for your family." What right do they have to act this way?" It sounds like a world ready for another Clinton presidency… Katzav understands that whether or not he is guilty he is in the way of people used to getting their way and far better connected than he is. Now he's called them on it and they will crush him if they can; only the extreme visibility of the matter and the ability of the President, as a Sephardic Jew, to play the Israeli version of the 'race card' may save him. The media spent the next several days counter-attacking; its bias is well-known to most of the public and it was clear that they would fight back to defend whatever credibility they have: Katzav now is openly the enemy. He had exposed one of the major places of rot in the modern State: the relentless Labor-left bias that reflects the State's origin, under British tutelage from the pre-State, and now State Labor Union, the Histadrut (whose former boss is now Defense Minister, the woefully unprepared Amir Peretz). Some who are familiar with media bias have argued that Katzav is an inapt object of sympathy for in his non-partisan position he did nothing to instruct the nation or lead it against political plans centered on the ethnic cleansing of Jews, their summary removal from their homes and confinement on "administrative detention" orders, a leftover of British Mandatory rule, without any evidence of wrongdoing; against the arraignment of Jews for defending their lives against Arabs attacking them in their homes or farms. There are dozens of Jews serving very lengthy, in effect life sentences for defending their lives and Katzav who could have has not pardoned them. But this misses the key point: Katzav brought briefly but intensely into focus the lack of ethics and extreme bias of the media. He himself missed the opportunity to relate its use to destroy him personally to its use against millions of other Israelis and against the Jewish character of the State itself. That is his major flaw and limitation and may relate to other kinds of selfishness too. We will see. Katzav also failed to identify the socially and nationally ruinous spread of victim-feminist laws regarding "sexual harassment," a body of lawless law that works by hearsay and in which "the rules of evidence do not apply" as one Massachusetts body of jurists wrote more than a decade ago. I am told by experienced Israeli journalists that the situation in Israel is even more draconian in this regard than in America; if so the state can collapse at any time, as indeed it seems it may. Any politician, domestic or foreign, male or female wherever these 'laws' hold sway need only set a woman against an opponent and they will be destroyed. Feminism long ago revealed its Stalinist aspects and works in terrible but predictable synchronicity with all those forces moving the world toward a global security state in which the main relations of individuals will be with governments rather than with family members; fathers will exist mainly as ATM machines, objects of mockery and butts of judicial wrath. Another detail: "A woman who is harassed doesn't bring the harasser gifts, or write him notes of appreciation, or repeatedly try to come back and work with him, or call the harasser from New York at 3 AM to wish him a happy birthday." The matter indeed seems like Hill-Thomas redux, a well-orchestrated set-up of a now routine kind; only those in powerful positions ever get the chance to respond that Thomas had and Katzav has. It is clear that feminism destroys all societies that it infests. An example especially but not uniquely relevant to modern Israel is the similarity between domestic protection orders ("restraining orders") and the administrative detention decrees that also destroy habeas corpus, presume and prejudge guilt and that punish. This may be particularly damaging to Jewish society whose approach to time, history, family, ethics, and thought centers on balancing male and female forces: wisdom and insight, solar and lunar years, Torah and science, the flow of divine 'male' waters to the fire and house of woman. By attacking 'male fire' and making women economically and ideologically self-sufficient feminism removes the letters of a divine Name from the Hebrew words "man" and "wife" leaving only hellfire as indeed feminism torches men, husbands, families and gender relations generally. By blocking and breaking the integrity of the 'mother letter' associated with men and male qualities, the mystique, a form of goddess rapture also destroys the place of the Eternal One in these primal letters that spells out, with the primal letter associated with man the word, "mother" itself. The foundation of the earth trembles. The kindness of a woman is fulfilled in marriage. That is the foundation of joy and abundance and reciprocity. Setting the sexes as competitors and enemies, feminism destroys life's balance. In a secular context, Daphne Patai touched some of these points in her book, Heterophobia (NY 1998). Whether he is completely, partly or not at all innocent of the campaign against him, Katzav missed and is missing a singular opportunity to ventilate two of the most destructive and characteristic aspects of culture in the modern west, especially Anglophone nations and in Israel: the extreme bias and lack of integrity in the media as a de facto arm of those who control the state; and the use of feminist politics and lawless law to destroy families and lives and build the already gigantic and increasingly totalitarian security state. These are the kind of broad-based social, non-politically partisan issues it is the mission of an Israeli President to address. Perhaps some people in the embattled nation of Israel will make these points and use them to try to turn the State around. It would be a great work and a true light to the nations.
Dr. Eugene Narrett is a writer and teacher in Massachusetts and is the author of Gathered Against Jerusalem: Essays on a False Peace (Dec. 2000). His book, Israel Awakened: A Chronicle of the Oslo War (2001), is currently available at www.1stbooks.com/bookview/7421.
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