This was published by Benjamin Kerstein in The New Ledger
The political left in many countries has a long history of defending despicable acts of violence when they are committed by the right people. From Norman Mailer’s campaign to free murderer Jack Abbott, who upon release promptly went and murdered someone else, to Bernadine Dohrn’s effusive praise of Charles Manson, right up to today’s disgusting international campaign on behalf of cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, there are few crimes too vile and horrendous for the left not to defend should the perpetrator belong to the correct movement or a fetishized oppressed minority.
Israel recently saw a particularly egregious example of this in the case of Sabbar Kashur, a Palestinian convicted of raping a young woman under false pretenses. According to initial media reports, Kashur was accused because he had claimed to be Jewish and the woman would not have slept with him had she known he was an Arab.
The Israeli left immediately rushed to Kashur’s side, accusing the entirety of Israeli society of racism and denouncing its justice system as akin to Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa. Much of the foreign press quickly followed suit. But without question the most fervent defender of the convicted rapist was Haaretzcolumnist Gideon Levy.
Levy is the rough Israeli equivalent of Noam Chomsky or Gore Vidal in America. His specialty is rhetorically unhinged denunciations of everything and anything to do with Israeli society. In this case, however, he outdid himself, in more ways than one. In his column on the case, unsubtly titled in English,“He Impersonated a Human,” Levy painted a picture of Kashur as something akin to a Palestinian cross between Mahatma Gandhi and Jesus Christ.
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September 10, 2010 at 7:34 am
Philip Horowitz
Setting aside the vileness of Gideon Levy, it remains a very odd story. Maybe it was reasonable to go for a plea bargain, but whose bright idea was it to go for rape by deception? This is a rare enough charge, though it does occur, and you would have thought someone would have realised it would be used against Israel. In any event, does not a plea bargain normally use a lesser offence within the main offence charged. Rape by deception would not seem to be an issue in a basically non-consensual and indeed violent rape. Why not charge the man with indecent assault or gbh or the like?
September 10, 2010 at 8:03 am
modernity
“The political left in many countries has a long history of defending despicable acts of violence when they are committed by the right people. “
Of course, if I wrote that “the political right in many countries has had a long history of defending racism, attacks on basic human rights, etc ”
It would be perfectly accurate (don’t worry I can supply volumes to back up my arguments), but rather unhelpful.
It would be far better if CIf Watch avoided politically partisan trite, such as Mr. Kerstein’s contribution, as it doesn’t help the discussions on the Guardian’s racism.
September 10, 2010 at 8:28 am
Richard Tebboth
I just wonder what DNA tests of these two individuals would reveal with respect to racial identity.
September 10, 2010 at 8:40 am
Gerald Kreeve
Ah the vile Tebboth is talking about the ‘Jewish gene’, the ultimate in racism.
You’re born with it, you’re stuck with it and it explains everything from the length of your nose, the curliness of your hair and your tendencies to excel at making brilliant discoveries in medicine and science.
Next week, Phrenology and You.
September 10, 2010 at 10:01 am
Ian Thal
Richard Tebboth:
Jews and Palestinian Arabs are very close genetically, close enough that modern Palestinians are most likely the descendants of either indigenous Levantine tribes that were already closely related to Jews or descendants of Jews who converted to either Christianity or Islam and subsequently adopted Arab language and culture.
At least that’s my lay person’s understanding of findings by specialists in the field– but if somebody who is knowledgeable in the field can clear up any misunderstandings I might have, I’m all ears.
Nonetheless, I doubt genetic sampling is simply not going to give us any significant insight into this conflict.
September 10, 2010 at 11:06 am
wearenotblind
Assuredly,the DNA of these two would not be as close as the DNA of David Irving and Gideon Levy.
September 10, 2010 at 12:30 pm
pretzelberg
wearenotblind
Assuredly,the DNA of these two would not be as close as the DNA of David Irving and Gideon Levy.
Clearly you need to free yourself from hate, my friend – oh, and broaden your perspective just a tad.
September 10, 2010 at 2:01 pm
pretzelberg
Gerald Kreeve
Ah the vile Tebboth is talking about the ‘Jewish gene’, the ultimate in racism.
My first reaction – even though Tebboth is only here to wind people up, which in your case perhaps succeeded – was the very opposite, i.e. that the Israelis and Palestinians are closely related.
tendencies to excel at making brilliant discoveries in medicine and science
Eh?
September 10, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Ian Thal
Pretzelberg-
I honestly couldn’t tell which position Tebboth was taking, so while I replied to him directly with the facts as best I understood them, I refrained from accusation.
Though I do wish to rephrase my clumsily constructed final sentence:
Nonetheless, I doubt genetic sampling is going to give us any significant insight into this conflict.
September 10, 2010 at 11:56 pm
wearenotblind
Pretzel,
Perhaps you missed the point. It had to do with unreliability. I’ll slow it down for you next time.
September 11, 2010 at 12:05 am
ahaaretztosser
Gideon Levi,one of his great advantages,is that he makes up things as he goes along, knowing full well,that being the darling of the foreign leftist media, anything that he says or writes will be taken as the Gospel truth.
This is the same Gideon Levi who claimed that Golda Meir said “that after what the Nazi’s did to us we can do whatever we want.”
Challenged for a source for the malicious quote he acknowledged that he had none.
A seriously deluded and pathetic figure.
September 11, 2010 at 12:44 am
peter1
Its a shame the full article wasn’t printed although the supplied link does allow us to read the following:
Unfortunately for Levy, every single thing he wrote about the case is false. As was recently revealed in an article for the Tel Aviv paper Ha’Ir, using the original court transcripts, the naughty little idyll between poor Sabbar and his inamorata was something more like this, as recounted by Lisa Goldman,
The plaintiff, identified in the article as “B*,” was an emotionally traumatized woman in her 20s who had been raped by her father from the age of six. On the day she met Kashur, she was living in a women’s shelter. Before that, she had worked briefly as a prostitute and spent some time living on the streets. Kashur lured her into the building on Hillel Street with the claim that he worked there and wanted to show her his office; he then assaulted her and raped her, leaving her naked and bleeding – which is how the police discovered her.
B. was later hospitalized in a psychiatric institution, where the police questioned her about the rape, which led them to Kashur. During the trial, after it became apparent that B’s past, combined with her emotional state, made her a vulnerable witness, the prosecution came up with a plea bargain of rape by deception.
Goldman’s post reprints the details of the assault, which are quite frankly impossible to print in anything resembling a family publication, but it is enough to consider this final, chilling statement from the plaintiff as she recounts her violation: “Then he said that if I stay silent and I don’t resist, then it would like end faster and it wouldn’t be, like, he wouldn’t use force. I still resisted him and it was forced.”
These revelations prove that, put simply, the Israeli left, and Gideon Levy foremost among them, rushed to defend a rapist in a case about which they knew nothing and about which they cared to know nothing. It played to their prejudices about Israeli society and reinforced their hatred of their fellow citizens. They felt they knew all they needed to know. As a result, they compounded a young woman’s trauma, exonerated a monstrous criminal in the court of public opinion, and debased themselves as human beings.
Gideon Levy fancies himself a prophet, a teller of uncomfortable truths to an uncaring society. Where this has led him is frankly horrifying. Did he know the details of the case? No, but he made no attempt whatsoever to find out about them. Did he shrink from slandering a rape victim as a racist? Apparently, not for a moment. Did he shrink from condemning his entire society on the basis of almost no evidence at all? Absolutely not. Did he disgrace himself and his profession? Unquestionably. He was the leading voice of a group of leftists who, in ironically sexist fashion, defamed a victim of rape out of demented sympathy for the man who violated her. After all, these things happen.
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Forget integrity, there is no shame what-so-ever.