And how do you explain the fact that the PLO and Syria did not take Israel up on its offers of complete capitulation under Ehud Barak?
There are two explanations: a religious-mystical explanation and a rational-scientific explanation. The religious-mystical explanation holds that Arafat and the senior Assad were simply stupid and so believed that by holding out for ever greater Israeli concessions, American pressure would deliver an unlimited and open-ended set of Israeli surrenders. The rational-scientific explanation is that the Almighty hardened their hearts, much like He did with Pharaoh, and He did so in His infinite mercy in order to save Israel from the stupidity of its own leaders.
Are there any up-and-coming Israeli politicians you find intriguing?
Of the current party leaders in Israel, I do not see many with any vision of how to rescue the country nor any sense of what needs to be done to end the war.
The Labor and Meretz parties are composed entirely of Oslo leftists, who differ only slightly from the anti-Zionist communist party. Amram Mitzna is not only preaching a policy of unilateral self-dismemberment, but is also one of the biggest liars Israeli politics has ever produced. Ideologically he is qualified to be mayor of Jenin, and his record as mayor of Haifa would be enough to certify him to be the prime minister of Zimbabwe.
The Shinui party is not interested in anything besides bashing the Orthodox and exhibiting contempt toward Judaism. The religious parties are far more interested in getting their shares of the budgetary fiscal pork than they are in rescuing Israel from the Oslo debacle. I like Efi Eitam, the new head of the National Religious Party, but most of the rest of his party slate consists of ''centrists'' who have not made up their minds yet whether appeasing the Palestinian terrorists or fighting them is the answer.
The only concern of the other religious parties regarding the danger that Mitzna will order a unilateral capitulation to the Arabs is that the eviction of the Yesha settlers not take place, G-d forbid, on Shabbat.
There are some small parties to the right of the Likud with better positions regarding Oslo, but they are divided and too small to have much impact. And even they do not speak in unambiguous terms about what really needs to be done.
Finally, there are the Arab nationalist Stalinist and fascist parties, which would like nothing better than seeing the Jews of Israel herded into concentration camps. There are almost no Jews who vote for the communists other than some of my colleagues on the faculties of the universities. All of the Arab student organizations on campus are associated with these parties.
Given your political views, you must be feel like a real outsider at Haifa university.
Haifa University is one of the two worst bastions in Israel for leftist academic extremism, the other being Ben-Gurion University. The other universities are only slightly less awful in terms of the prevalence of leftist radicalism and anti-Zionism among the faculty members. Haifa University hosts some of the worst tenured traitors in Israel, people who devote every waking moment to promoting anti-Israel embargoes by anti-Semites overseas, to spreading anti-Israel lies and propaganda, to rationalizing Palestinian atrocities. A few even write for Islamist fundamentalist and neo-Nazi websites and journals. Of course, not all faculty members are extremists or even leftists, but there is a strong leftist domination.
Israeli universities have all adopted pro-Arab preferences and quotas in admissions in the name of ''affirmative action,'' and for all intents and purposes Arab students (and sometimes faculty) are admitted with almost no standards at all. Haifa University has the country's largest Arab student body, and the Arab students have been radicalized by Oslo.They prance about campus with T-shirts and posters with portraits of Nasser and Che Guevera. There are frequent rallies of Arab students and Jewish faculty leftists waving PLO flags and screaming anti-Israel and anti-Jewish slogans, including slogans supporting violence.
Tell us something about your personal and educational background.
I was born in Philadelphia in 1951. My dad was a refugee from Germany who arrived in New York in 1938 with some change in his pocket. He served in the U.S. army under Patton and was in the same unit with Henry Kissinger. He met my mom when he went to donate blood in 1948 to Magen David Adom and she worked there as a volunteer. Dad had been in hachshara (chalutz training) camp in Europe to go to Palestine in the 1930's, but the British White Paper kept him out.
I grew up in a (religiously) Conservative home. It was also a Zionist home, and I was a member of Habonim, which was then beginning to morph into a far-left group (at which point I quit). Bill Cosby's mom was my babysitter as a youth, was at my bar mitzvah, and my dad sold Bill his first suit of clothes. Really.
