NIGHTMARE “REALITY”

Let us imagine a country living up to the standards of Haaretz’ Gideon Levy and those like him.

First off, everyone who did not agree with him would be reminded continuously that they were ignorant, stupid and morally depraved. Ah, wait a moment: Levy does this to those of us who choose to be patriots almost daily anyway!

Next, in Gideon’s dream “reality,” deligitimization would substitute for honest criticism. If you didn’t accept this twisted concept, then you would be deemed a fascist. But, hey, once again, this is what Levy does all the time already!

In Gideon Levy’s perfect world every citizen would hack away at Israel’s legitimacy no matter what she does. They would raise their children to hate the soldiers who defend them and would glorify the poor, helpless Palestinians. Every miscreant that calls his- or herelf an academic and spends his/her life trying to wipe Israel off the map would be met at the border with open arms, by all Israelis.

In Levy’s utopia any soldier in a position of trust who violates the oath to defend and protect the state by stealing top secret documents and selling them to journalists would not be punished; they would be celebrated as heroes and probably given a medal for valor.

Sometimes I wonder why Gideon Levy still lives in Israel. Not only does he hate the government of Israel, but he hates us, the citizens of the country, too. He continually refers to us in his articles as the “MAJORITY” as if we were a slavering gang of rabble-rousers.

Why does he hate us so? For one thing, he claims we Israelis are becoming fascists. He appears to sincerely believe that we want to silence all those who criticize Israel and that we are actively destroying the democracy we once worked so hard to create.

All of this is true in Gideon Levy’s arrogant, elitist dream state. In the real world, here is what is truly going on.

Israeli democracy is thriving. Gideon Levy knows this better than anyone. After all his writing -- and the fact that it gets printed in a paper that daily tries to undermine the whole nation -- is proof of the pudding. In almost every one of his articles he deliberately substitutes criticism for insidious delegitimization. One of his more outlandish, preposterous and demeaning examples was when he recently compared Israel to North Korea!

Gideon Levy does not criticize his country; he slanders her. Levy’s take on Israel not letting Noam Chomsky into her borders to speak at the West Bank Bir Ziet university is another example of his arrogance and anti-Israel sentiment. Why should Israel let another professor, who has sided with Holocaust deniers, delegitimizes her on a regular basis and acts against her, into her borders?

Levy chooses to ignore that fact that that demagogues can be far more dangerous than weapons (unless, of course, it’s in the cause of trying to muzzle an eloquent pro-Israel academic like Alan Dershowitz, often critical of nay-sayers like Chomsky). Chomsky, a clever man, prevaricates about Israel (and admittedly nearly all Western nation-governments) almost continuously and apparently has no boundaries when it comes to his invention of falsehoods connected to Israel.

What do Levy or Chomsky have to say about the near-daily demonstrations against the Israeli government in East Jerusalem by Arabs and foreign activists? Nothing, because these could only occur in a democratic country, and the Levy/Chomskys of this world are trying their best to paint Israel in un-democratic colors.

Israeli Arab Knesset members berate their country on a daily basis, and they do it in ways that no other minority could in the Western World. They delegitimize their country and hide behind their Knesset seats. The left-leaning free press in Israel continually attack the government, something that could only happen in a democracy. A soldier, Anat Kamm, steals Army documents pertaining to IDF positioning in the case of a war with Syria, Lebanon and Iran; she then sells them to a journalist who prints much of what was in those documents. Kamm trial is underway now; the worst she’ll get is a life sentence. This treasonous behavior would have gotten her worse in many other places in the world and would have gotten her the same in any democracy in the Western World.

Students on campuses across Israel are silenced when they object to their professors’ injection of opinion over fact when discussing Israel’s political situation. Many of these professors also go out of their way, not simply to criticize their country, but to delegitimize her. This, of course, could only be done in a country that upholds democratic institutions.

Gideon Levy and his ilk suffer from a serious disease called elitism. This disease makes Levy and his friends incapable of understanding what is really happening on the ground in Israel.

The citizens of Israel, who have backed peace on so many occasions, are sick and tired of continually giving and giving to the Palestinians and the Arab world, but always getting feces in return. We are so very, very tired of watching our governments get burned by Yassar Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and their friends and then having the world condemn us for their treacherous behavior. We are tired of people like Gideon Levy, who gets to write his garbage with no restraints, condemning us for doing more to create a Palestinian State then the Palestinians and their Arab brethren have done.

Gideon Levy was obviously on a long vacation in his dream world during the debacle of the Camp David and Taba talks, when Israel gave the Palestinians all they wanted and more and got war in the place of peace.

Gideon Levy is the true ignoramus. He demands that we sit silently by as the world tries to steal our country from us. A democracy has the right to defend -- and just as important, to maintain -- itself against those who wish to harm her. But Levy wishes for an Israel that will surrender his or her freedoms to a malicious, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic world.

Sorry, Gideon, we’re just not ready for that. If that makes me stupid, then I'll take that over your “genius.”