Jesus wasn’t Jewish but Palestinian. In fact, he was the first Palestinian shahid, according to a religious program on PA TV.
By D. BLOOMFIELDpeace hand shake abbas netanyahu clinton 311(photo credit: AP)
The International Institute for Audacity has announced its Chutzpah Awards for 2010.• Palestinian “scholars” – Not only was there no Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, but the Western Wall is a Muslim structure, declared Palestinian “scholars.” To top it off, Jesus wasn’t Jewish but Palestinian. In fact, he was the first Palestinian shahid (martyr), according to a religious program on PA TV. As Christians around the world rush to rewrite their Bibles and Christmas carols, I am reminded of what Ehud Barak told Yasser Arafat when the latter made the same incendiary statements: From where do you think Jesus threw out the money lenders, the mosque?!• Racist rabbis – Hundreds of rabbis endorsed a fatwa against Jews renting or selling property to Arabs. Maybe those Jewish ayatollahs are just senile, and have forgotten about the notorious Nuremberg laws. Or the laws in some Arab states (and the West Bank) that make selling property to Jews a capital offense. Since many are on the public payroll, the government’s failure to fire these men who do more to destroy Israel’s stature than any enemy is tantamount to acquiescence.• Henry Kissinger – Whether or not you buy into his “quiet diplomacy” approach to Soviet Jewry, his belated apology and insistence that his references to gas chambers were “taken out of context,” there is no excuse for his AWOL moral compass. What hasn’t come out on the Nixon tapes (and probably won’t because it was never uttered) was a single word of protest from Kissinger as he sat in the Oval Office listening to a notorious anti-Semite spew his bile against Jews, blacks and others. Henry, putting his access to power uber alles, never once told Richard Nixon that his bigotry was offensive.• WikiLeaks – The avalanche of classified cables exposed the hypocrisy of Arab leaders who publicly declare Israel the greatest threat to regional stability while privately confiding it is really Iran, and how they’d like the US and Israel to “cut off the head of the snake,” in the words of the Saudi king. This Chutzpah Award is shared with WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, who sanctimoniously glorifies leaking everyone’s secrets but has a hissy fit when his own secrets are exposed.• Wingnuts – A quartet of politicians – there are more – who thankfully lost in last month’s congressional elections. Sharon Angle of Nevada, who opposed abortion even for young teen victims of rape or incest, saying they should learn to “turn a lemon into lemonade.” Christine O’Donnell of Delaware, who admitted that she had once dabbled in witchcraft but took out TV ads to proclaim, “I am not a witch.” She also couldn’t find anything in the Constitution supporting church-state separation (hint: First Amendment). Rich Iott of Ohio, whose hobby was dressing up in a Nazi Waffen SS uniform. Joe Miller, the Tea-Party-backed candidate in Alaska who challenged the incumbent’s victory by contending writein votes that misspelled Murkowski should not be counted. How do you spell sour grapes, Joe?• Rep. Joe Barton – He apologized to BP for the government’s demand that it pay for the damage from its oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, calling it a “shakedown.” He told the oil giant he was “ashamed” of what the administration was asking it to do. No apologies, however, when he shook down those civicminded energy folks for contributions to his campaigns, which he no doubt will pay back as a senior member of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. By sheer coincidence, no doubt, Barton is the House’s No. 1 recipient of oil and gas industry political largesse – about $1.5 million since 1990, and this year’s figures aren’t in yet.• Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas – This pair of artificial doves are all talk and no walk. If they devoted as much energy to making peace as they do to avoiding it, a settlement might be possible. Netanyahu clearly prefers building settlements over negotiating peace. And Abbas is devoting his energy to delegitimizing Israel, which he refuses to even recognize as the Jewish homeland, and insists that in his Palestinian state “we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it.”• Avigdor Lieberman – How many times does Prime Minister Netanyahu have to announce that his thuggish foreign minister doesn’t speak for the government on foreign policy – or anything else? In just the past few days, Lieberman called the Turkish prime minister and foreign minister liars and called the Palestinian Authority “an illegitimate government.”Netanyahu wimped out again, as with the racist rabbis, unable or unwilling to fire either one out of fear of offending a radical political interest. That would take courage and leadership.
There are many more deserving recipients – Nancy Pelosi who said, “We have to pass the [health care] bill so you can find out what is in it,” and John McCain, who ran in 2008 as “the original maverick” but this year, in the face of charges that he wasn’t conservative enough, insisted “I never considered myself a maverick.”Send us your nominations.bloomfieldcolumn@gmail.com
