YOU WON'T FIND THIS STUFF IN HAARETZ

By Schmoel Yitzhak

Why is it that every time I pick up a copy of Haaretz -- disinfectant in hand -- I think of one word, QUISLING?

There's an easy answer, friends.

Vidkun Quisling was Adolf Hitler's puppet as head of Norway's government after the Nazi's had annexed the country at the start of World War II. 

As it happened, good, old Vidkun did his collaborative job so well that by the time he died in 1945, quisling had become part and parcel of our vocabulary.

And so even now, 65 years later, quisling is still defined as a traitor who serves as the puppet of the enemy.

Well, we don't have to look beyond the borders of Gaza, Lebanon -- alias Hezbollah-land -- and Syria to find Israel's quislings.

They are sprinkled throughout the nation, from Metulla to Eilat. Sometimes it's under a thin disguise, such as a newspaper columnist or television commentator. But they are there and each day they weaken Israel.

Like Norway's Vidkun, they're laboring under the misapprehension that they're doing their country a great big favor by undermining the government at every turn.

When it comes to quisling journalism, there isn't a periodical that can match Haaretz for unrelenting verbal assault against the lone democracy in the Middle East.

Just a glance at a couple of headlines explains my point.

Under a Gideon Levy byline we have: GAZA FLOTILLA DRIVES ISRAEL INTO A SEA OF STUPIDITY. Or, another Haaretz germ-filled gem: This filed by Zvi Bar'el: RACIST BILL EXPOSES THE TRUE FACE OF ISRAEL.

If one didn't know better, just reading the daily anti-government tirades, one would have to conclude that Haarettz either is funded by Hamas, Syria or that ever-lovable Nasrallah, hiding somewhere in his Lebanese rat hole.  

Can you imagine just for a moment if the tables were turned and Levy dared write such undermining commentary as a Muslim journalist in any Arab country.

We could say, conservatively, that his life would be worth about five shekels -- in Monopoly money. 

What puzzles me is the true aim of such quisling journalism. 

Is Levy hoping to bring down the government ?

Does he wish that his country ultimately be weakened to a point where the Arab enemy achieves its lifetime goal of exterminating every Israeli?

Does he not realize that that also would result in the deaths of quisling Jews?

Make no mistake, the Jewish quislings -- during World War II they were identified as the Judenrat  -- are liberally sprinkled across Europe and North America.

Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Isi Liebler identified the overseas quislings -- except he didn't employ our term -- as "bodies primarily controlled by anti-Israel activists." Among those he correctly cited were j Street and J Call, each of which might as well be more accurately labelled Quisling Street and Quisling Call. 

"Today," writes Liebler, "these pseudo 'pro peace' bodies seek to undermine the only liberal democratic state in the region and divert attention from the reprehensible behavior and denial of human rights practiced by Israel's enemies."

I pick up Haaretz, think of Quisling and then mumble that hoary bromide: With friends like these who needs enemies?

Trouble is that it fits that newspaper to an H -- as in hideous.