The following report appeared in the Jerusalem Post today:
Israel recently foiled a terror attack on the Dimona nuclear reactor, a Kuwaiti newspaper quoted British sources as saying Friday.
According to the paper, Al Jarida, Israeli security forces arrested a senior employee at the plant after they uncovered a plot to blow up one of the heaters at the facility.
According to the British sources, the worker, who was only identified as Moshe, is also suspected of leaking information about the reactor to foreign sources.
Is it true? Who knows? A Kuwaiti newspaper quoting unnamed British sources plus about $1.51 will buy you one Euro (if you act quickly). But the fact that today this is considered not only thinkable but quite possible is upsetting.
The early Zionists wished for the Jewish state to be a ‘normal’ country with Jewish criminals and prostitutes (although they probably didn’t expect quite so many). But they certainly weren’t hoping for Jewish traitors and saboteurs like ‘Moshe’.
Possibly the fact that the intellectual and media elite of Israel are so anti-Israel has something to do with it.
An academic named Ze’ev Sternhell has received this year’s Israel prize in political science. Here are some choice quotations from his voluminous output:
Many in Israel, perhaps even the majority of the voters, do not doubt the legitimacy of the armed resistance in the territories themselves. The Palestinians would be wise to concentrate their struggle against the settlements, avoid harming women and children. — “Facing a sleepwalking government“, Ha’aretz (2001)
“In the end we will have to use force against the settlers in Ofra or Elon Moreh. Only he who is willing to storm Ofra with tanks will be able to block the fascist danger threatening to drown Israeli democracy.” — Davar, 1988
And Sternhell is not the only one. Apparently there is sort of a contest between left-wing Israeli intellectuals to say the most outrageous thing (even to an American Secretary of State), like former Ha’aretz editor David Landau’s comment that Israel needed to be ‘raped’ by America into making peace with the Palestinians (and no, it wasn’t a case of mistranslating the Hebrew verb ל×× ×•×¡ because Landau’s first language was English).
Every society, whether a business enterprise or a nation, gets a character formed by shared experiences but also by a top-down process from its leaders. So it’s been suggested that Microsoft’s aggressiveness has its roots in Bill Gates’ personality. When you have intellectual leaders who are apparently opposed to the whole enterprise of the Jewish state and political leaders who are constantly involved in scandal, is it surprising that there are people like Moshe?
Kuwaiti newspaper that quotes British sources is a think source indeed. So let’s wait a bit more. As for the learned professor – yes, it is a shame. There is a petition going around to rescind the prize. Pleasure to sign, I can assure you.
The giving of the Israel Prize to Ze’ev Sternhall is completely wrongheaded, stupid, outrageous, idiotic. Sternhall is a traitor who time and again has attacked Israel and supported its enemies. I may be wrong but I sense it is Yuli Tamir who is behind this. In any case it should be protested.
It is by the way absolutely hypocritical of Sternhall to accept the prize. Let’s hope he repudiates it.