Mary Rizzo's friends attack the wrong city!By Steven Plaut, professor at the University of Haifa.
December 3, 2001 9:35 a.m.
Haifa is Israel's third city, but by international
standards it is a small town. It is also the least Israeli of Israel's cities. It has weather like
the Riviera. It is cosmopolitan: On the top of the
mountain German is still spoken, at the bottom Arabic, and in the middle Russian. It has the
country's only subway train. It has lots of trees and
a huge environmentalist movement. In Haifa, children dare not venture outside nor make noise during the siesta hours of the afternoon. A dirty park bench will produce storms of protests and letters to the editor.
Haifa was always the least religious city in the
country, and buses ran on the Sabbath long before they
did elsewhere. It is reputed to have the best
Jewish-Arab relations in the country. A bleeding-heart
institution for Jewish-Arab dialogue named Beit
Hagefen is a major symbol of the city.
Haifa is also arguably the largest remaining bastion
of the Israeli Left. It has never had a mayor not from the Labor party. Its current mayor postures to the left of Ehud Barak, hoping to grab his position as leader of the Labor party. "Red Haifa," as it was once known thanks to its trade-union ruling class, is in fact a middle-class city of yuppie elitists and employees of the high-tech industries. It was the only
serious city that voted for Barak in the last elections. It is home to the Technion and the University of Haifa, the second of which contains the
largest Arab student body in the country as well as a
gaggle of extremist anti-Zionist "New Historians."
Haifa is home to the largest chapter of the Israeli
Communist party, and the comrades are largely Jews,
unlike chapters elsewhere. The Haifa Theater is a
bastion of anti-Zionism, where any play purporting to
show that Zionists are Nazis is sure to be staged.
The university is almost wall-to-wall Leftist, and
semi-Marxist Meretz is considered as far right as most
academics are willing to venture. The Leftism infiltrates everywhere, and even my colleagues in the business school have ideological positions ordinarily only to be found among social workers or deconstructionist sociologists.
Haifa Leftists have long been convinced their city
would be spared PLO atrocities because Haifaites are such nice, progressive people, and because they purport to have such good relations with local Arabs. When many Jews stopped coming to restaurants and stores owned by local Arabs briefly after the high-holiday pogroms last year, teams of Haifaites, including many tenured Lefties, made a point of showing their solidarity with their Arab neighbors, at the same time that their Arab neighbors were making a point of showing their solidarity with
PLO bombers and Hamas suicide bombers.
Haifa Lefties believed they were protected due to
their progressive image, their obsession with
recreational compassion and environmentalism, and
their Leftist solidarity with Arabs. They were sure
that the wave of Arab atrocities in which Israel is
being bathed would pass over them, like a Palestinian
angel of death in a parody of the story of the Exodus.
Needless to say, they were wrong.
Will there be an awakening at last in this quiet dream
world of Leftist delusion?
No there will not. For one, Haifa yuppies do not take
buses. Within a day or three, they will return to
their habitual peacespeak. The Peace Now stickers will
reappear. The university leftists will resume their
activities. The mayor will call for a return to peace
talks with the PLO with greater Israeli flexibility. The local Jewish communists will resume their protests against occupation, as will the Arab student unions. The local politicians will resume their sacred mission of making sure the malls stay open on the Sabbath. The Arab students will hold celebrations and parties in which the bus bombing today will be toasted tomorrow, while the Leftist Jewish students and faculty will rote-recite their solidarity with them and pat themselves on their backs for sticking to their ideological guns in the face of adversity and atrocities by their peace partners.
The Kishinev pogrom in 1903 is supposed to have
changed history. It shocked Eastern European Jews into seeking to escape czarist Russia for safety. It inspired a famous poem by Bialik. And in many ways it was the trigger for the formation of mass immigration by Jews to the Land of Israel, then misnamed Palestine. It brought down the wrath of the world on czarism. At the Kishinev pogroms, 45 helpless and defenseless Jews were killed and about 600 wounded.
Shimon Peres and the Israeli Left have created a
situation in which a new Kishinev Pogrom takes place
in Israel every week, while its legendary army sits
along the sidelines, shackled by the politicians, and
exercises restraint, while its leaders await the day
when they can conduct peace talks with the
pogromchiks.
Professor Steven Plaut of Haifa University.
