Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

ZOA 2011 dinner honorees

Mort Klein and ZOA provide endless enjoyment for anyone with an acute political satiric sense.  Take their latest fundraising gala last night covered by Haaretz.  There was so much to delight in, I hardly know where to start.  Why don’t we begin with the Bar Ilan University professor, who boasted that his Orthodox institution was the only remaining university in Israel that was “Zionist.”  Wouldn’t that be something like Alan Dershowitz bragging that Harvard was the only remaining Christian university left in America?  But that wasn’t the worst.  The good professor complained about his academic colleagues at Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities:

“There are many Bolshevik post-Zionists at these universities, who pack their faculties with similar-minded lecturers. The Israeli universities are overflowing with post-Modernists who undermine not only Zionism but academic truth itself.”

Did you notice the equation between Zionism and “academic truth” the good professor makes?  Last I checked, the finest universities had no specific ideological or political orientation.  In fact, most truly good academics will tell you that an institution which holds to one is betraying the values of free inquiry that are critical to academia.  This guy is no junior lecturer either.  He’s Ephraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center.  Can you imagine how this hack got Anwar Sadat’s name associated with his think tank?  The poor Egyptian leader must be turning over in his grave.

But why stop there?  There were so many other wonders to behold at this wingnut fest.  How ’bout Republican settler advocate Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who denounced the concept of Palestinian statehood (“A Palestinian state? What is that, anyway?”) in receiving the “coveted” “Dr. Irving & Cherna Moskowitz Award for Promoting Strong US-Settler [er, Israel] Relations.”

Michele Bachmann was on hand to receive the “Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award.”  This is what constitutes “defending Israel” in the twisted minds of the ZOA and the 800 ardent wingnut supporters who flocked to this event:

 [She] pledged to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem “on the day that I am sworn into office” and…assert[ed] that “Israel will never be up for grabs – not one inch, not one acre, not one square foot will ever be on the chopping block.”

…Asserting that Iranian President Ahmadinejad was “striving for a second Holocaust” Bachman said that “once again millions of Jews are at the precipice of losing their lives today”. She called for the US Navy to impose a complete naval blockade on Iran, for the US to deploy comprehensive ballistic missile systems “on land, sea, air and in space” and for the Pentagon to prepare “war plans” in order to counter Iran’s nuclear threat.

Ahmadinejad, she said, “will seek to use nuclear weapons against the US as well – and the US will learn what it is to be Israel if it does not act quickly.” She said that the US Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State and CIA director must all support this “freedom policy” and that those in the bureaucracy who fail to do so – “especially in the State Department” – should be replaced.

I really liked that touch of deploying nuclear missiles against Iran even in space.  I didn’t even know we maintain nuclear warheads in outer space.  Just think, it’s not bad enough we’re going to destroy earth’s atmosphere by dropping the Big One on the Aye-ranians, Bachmann wants to send radiation into outer space as well for the next millennium or so.  I found it especially ironic that this nuclear attack on Iran enjoyed the moniker “freedom policy.”  I suppose if you want to “liberate” half the inhabitants of earth of their lives and to pollute their environment for centuries you could call it that.

Then of course, there was the piece de la resistance, Glenn Beck. who fulminated that the situation in today’s world was far worse than in Hitler’s day:

…Because today the world is “aiding and abetting” the ranting of madmen who are out to destroy Israel and the Jewish people.

Somehow he forget Hitler’s appeaser, Neville Chamberlain.  Speaking of which, you knew you couldn’t escape a Beckian rhetorical assault without a brutish “historical” analogy between the left and Nazis.  So he equated the Brownshirts and Occupy Wall Street.  Not to mention OWS facilitates rape because it doesn’t denounce the sexual violence that allegedly takes place at their meeting sites.

Do you think there’ll be an ADL alert taking these a-historical numbskulls to task for abusing the Holocaust for partisan political purposes?  Unlikely.

The best line of the night, by far, was this one:

…”There is an 18 month window” left in which to save the world – “and I believe I know how to do it”. He pledged to announce on December 8 where he is headed – “there is a vacuum and I intend to stand in its place”, he said – but gave no details what he was referring to.

Almost brings to mind Jesus doesn’t it?  Though the analogy might not have gone over so well if it’d been raised last night.  What’s he going to run for?  God?  Please tell me he’s going to run for president.  Please God.  That’s all the Republicans need.  If I thought Obama deserved a second term, I’d be doing a happy dance if Beck threw his Stetson (oh excuse me, that’s Rick Perry territory) in the ring.

Returning to Beck’s statement above, if he “stands” in that vacuum all the way through December 8th he’s liable to suffocate, either from lack of oxygen or the oppressive weight of his own megalomania.  That is assuming he’s humanoid.  If he’s made of the divine, all bets are off.

I bet you didn’t know that the Beck-man was such a chum of Nelson Mandela, did you?  How else to explain this invocation of the great African liberator?

“To claim that there is apartheid [in Israel] when there is none is to diminish Nelson Mandela and all those like him.”

In honoring Glenn Beck, who’s been known to let loose some anti-Semitic ejaculations on his show, ZOA repeated its tradition of honoring such haters.  In 2005, it similarly honored Pat Robertson.

The fact that ZOA has named awards after two of the richest, most racist and chauvinistic American Jews means they’re getting oodles of cash from Moskowitz and Adelson.  I’ll give my own Tikun Olam award to anyone who comes up with the goods on these fat cats supporters of Greater Judea.  I’d love to be able tell you how much they’ve given to the Mort Klein Settlermania Roadshow.