"Terror! Terror Makes You Piss Your Pants!": Caroline Glick Kicking Ass - Sorta

בס''ד

This article was originally published at Blogcritics Magazine, 23 June 2010;
Copyright © R. Kossover, 2010.

When the world's media mugged Israel before, during, and after its resistance to the Turkish terrorists attempting to break its blockade of Gaza, Caroline Glick, a leading Israeli news commentator writing out of the Jerusalem Post, displayed the kind of guts and moxie sadly lacking in the Israeli prime minister and his cabinet. As part of her Latma TV (látma is Hebrew for slap) "Tribal Update" broadcasts, she included a parody of "We Are the World" called "We Con the World", which made fun of the so-called "peace activists", the Turkish terrorists who were on the Mavi Marmara, of whom nine now are thankfully dead. A cut of this broadcast, called "The Flotilla Crew Sings We Con the World" went viral on YouTube and got over three million hits in a week.

YouTube tried to shut down Caroline Glick. They refused to air her "We Con the World" video alleging copyright infringement. A similar (but far nastier) parody of "We Are the World" about the Obama victory sits undisturbed among YouTube's tens of thousands of videos. Anyone can access it, and the whine of "copyright infringement" will not stop them. It was obvious that the owners of YouTube were kissing Arab ass as they had done previously, when they tried to shut down videos of the IDF fighting in Gaza in 2008-2009. Caroline Glick attacked YouTube, calling them the hypocrites they are. She was polite enough about it - but she warned readers and viewers, ‘For Those People Who Hate Me, Expect More’. Of course, to find the details of what was behind that warning, you would have to go to that conservative echo chamber, Pajamas Media, a difficult trip in the ether not all of you are willing to make.

At Elise Cooper's Pajamas Media article, we see Glick condemning YouTube's hypocrisy saying the following:

They are trying to personalize everything and demonize what they can’t contend with. The left has one card, and they play it over and over again for dealing with issues. They have no answer but to resort to the politics of destruction. Their favorite method is to call anyone who gives them an answer that they can’t contend with a racist. They cry for terrorists who would destroy them, but come out against democracies.

She also condemns the Jews of Hollywood for refusing to defend Israel.

We should note that YouTube is still trying to undermine Caroline Glick - if one searches out episodes 55 or 53 of Tribal Update, they will be virtually impossible to find.

But as a satirist whose nasty humor has all too much truth in it, she attacks many targets, the least of whom are terrorists.

This article is an exploration of Caroline Glick's work, with link after link to her "Tribal Updates" from where her satire is launched. All of these links are in Hebrew, with English subtitles. Let's get a look at her "Tribal Updates" first from the monochromatic leftists who dominate Israeli broadcasting in reality, and were kind enough to have her as a guest on one of their programs. This tape begins with one of the hosts talking about "taking a sharp turn to the right". These leftist "journalists" praise the professionalism of her productions. In spite of all this, they still try to pick apart her funding, going after, as they so rarely do for their favorites, the money.

The first of these Tribal Updates for you to view, #40, is typical, beginning with the newscasters, Elhanán and Ronít, going through the newspapers themselves and reading the news before going live. Elhanán reads of a Sudanese refugee raping a woman. Ronít jumps on him for being racist - until she realizes that the raped woman was a Russian immigrant. Then, apparently, it was alright that she was raped.  Here, Glick goes after the prejudices - and hypocrisies - in Israeli Hiloní society which are so typically found, especially in Tel Aviv. The "Palestinian" "Minister for Uncontrollable Rage" is able to lead the broadcasters along like a pair of fools on a string of lies - while telling them he is doing so.

Next, we see in Tribal Update #46, how the leftist journalists in Israel look and act like total idiots, complete with special spectacles to help them. This video also examines how the left wing media manipulates the news, creating crises out of nothing - and projecting events that will happen.

In Tribal Update #45, Caroline Glick digs further into this one-sided reporting, using two examples; the first is of two "academics" who both agree that the naqba, the el-Husseini view of Israel's creation being a disaster for Arabs, should be covered in the academic curriculum of the high schools in the country - but disagree on whether it should be a subject on the bagruyót, the national matriculation tests in Israel. And typical of leftists, they wind up screaming at each other, calling each other fascist, extremist, etc., while denying the legitimacy of their own country - and not even realizing it. The second example is a parody on the "fact" shows in Israel, the ones that trumpet social crises in the country. In this episode, a stern woman interviews a Sudanese refugee living illegally in Israel who participates in a mugging. The whole tale is told from the point of view of the mugger, who attempts to steal a wallet or handbag, or something of that nature. The way the interview is presented, it is his right to attack and rob Israelis, and the viewer is supposed to sympathize with his terrible plight. He has almost succeeded, when he is caught by the Immigration Police. The interviewer, seeking to elicit sympathy for the mugger, mentions that now he faces deportation to Sudan, where his wife and seven children live. Apparently this is not the case: the Immigration Police force him to move to Ashdod - where cleaners like him will only make $10/hr instead of the $12 or $13 in Tel Aviv..... What is not said is a fact most Israelis know - that Ashdod is filled with S'faradím, MizraHím (Jews from Greece, Turkey, Iraq and Syria) and Russians - whom the élites in Tel Aviv have only contempt for.

In the beginning of this episode of Tribal Update - from 29 April 2010 - Elhanán tries to describe the Turkish slaughter of Armenians without calling it "genocide" and has trouble, until Ronít helps him out. This episode features "President Obama" singing about how he hates the "dirty Jews" and why, revealing his deeply held feelings. While this is only parody, one has to wonder from his behavior how closely Glick has nailed Obama on the head. But this 9 minute video goes further. It reveals the basic corruption underlying Israeli society - as an "investigative reporter" talks about a "Harry Weiss" who it turns out is a "stockholder" of the "company" that puts out "Tribal Update" (shades of CSTV?). As notes get passed back and forth indicating that he is in fact a stockholder or not, the "investigative reporter's" views change from praise to condemnation and back.

Finally, let's look at Tribal Update #55. Because I had so much difficulty picking this up from YouTube, I went to WeJew, Shlomo Wollins' site. Here, you get the operatic rendition of Ahmadinejad, Erdogan and Bashir el-Assad, three performers who do not cancel their appearances here (or their deadly performances), the Three Terrors. Their song is where the title of this article comes from. But you get more. You get a satirical look at the virulent Jew-hatred that has swept Europe and its governments as the "presidency of the European Parliament" explains to Tzar Li, "another" investigative reporter for Tribal Update, that Israelis are turds (the Hebrew is actually "shits") and because they are turds the presidency wants the Arabs to kill Jews. The leftist reporters seem unable to absorb the fact that they are being cursed out and told to die, and keep wondering what it is precisely that is bothering the Jew-haters in the "presidency of the European Parliament". And you will notice that Caroline Glick is giving the world the middle finger, constantly reminding them of her hit, "We Con the World" and selling t-shirts with pictures of the "Flotilla Choir"

Now that we have looked at the satirical aspect of her work, let's look at the serious aspects of it. As a Jerusalem Post Deputy Editor, she has to be restrained in what she says, and she is. This interview is from 1 June, the day after the "flotilla" incident. Note what she does not mention - she does not mention the fact that Erdogan's AKP Party is a Wahhabist party with ideological ties to Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. This was already known to Mossad and was available to anyone looking at the Mossad's backdoor "drop site", Debkafiles.

In analyzing events as they have transpired over the last three weeks, we see the limitations of what Caroline Glick feels comfortable advocating. She points out correctly that two threats emerge from the "flotilla" crisis of the end of May. One is the possibility of suicide protesters, which is what the "peace activists" on the Mavi Marmara really were. They were there to incite a slaughter - gaining for themselves martyrdom, and gaining condemnation of Israel at the same time. This new wrinkle on the "suicide bomber" is one threat that Israel faces. The other threat, one she feels is a different threat, is the possibility of open warfare. She elaborates:

Syrian President Bashar Assad told the BBC Wednesday (16 June) that the region is moving towards war. And the Turkish government is continuing to escalate its assaults on Israel. On Thursday (17 June) Turkey threatened to cut off diplomatic relations with Israel if Israel does not issue a formal apology for its takeover of the Mavi Marmara and pay restitution to the families of the terrorists killed on board the ship.

Obviously the most disturbing aspect of the war threats is the specter of Turkish naval vessels attacking the Israeli navy. If Turkey — a NATO member - participates in a war against Israel, the repercussions for Israel's relations with NATO member states, including the US, as well as the EU are liable to be unprecedented.

While going to war against Israel would be a major gamble for Turkey, in recent years it has not shied away from high stakes challenges to its NATO allies. Indeed, one of Turkey's ruling AKP party's first actions upon taking power in 2003 was to deny the US military the right to invade Iraq from its territory. The deleterious impact of Turkey's refusal to come to the aid of its NATO ally at the time has been felt by US forces in Iraq ever since.

Note that Glick continues to ignore the fact that Turkish troops, planes and ships were dispatched to Turkish Cyprus before the boarding of the Mavi Marmara, a fact that by now she should have been aware of. She ignores the fact that Turkey's Recep Erdogan has been spoiling for an excuse to further strengthen the Wahhabist AKP régime in Ankara by starting a war with us. As a writer and analyst, she is considerably more circumscribed in what she says than as a satirist. Were she to point all these things out to her readers, as I have, the inescapable conclusions that we must prepare for a decisive and bloody war with Turkey, Persia, and Syria/Lebanon/HizbAllah, dangerous as this confrontation would be, would be an argument she would be impelled to make.

So, in short, the satirist in Caroline Glick goes for the jugular - the analyst in her is very restrained.

Why?

Let’s leave off to the side that this strategy she suggests is probably impossible to follow. It presumes us in Israel having the ability to control the actions of rulers of enemy states. In war, that is generally not possible – even when you attack first and the battle seems to be going your way.

Let’s not suggest that Caroline Glick is not intelligent enough to understand the inherent weaknesses of what she proposes. I’m sure she does. The question remains. Why does she propose a faulty strategy? And why is she so restrained?

For the answer to this, we need to go back to that YouTube video by news “giants” in Israel’s leftist media, the fifth link in this article. They provide the answer. They poke at Caroline and find out who funds Latma TV - the Center for Security Policy in Washington, a think tank she works for. This is at about 06:27 minutes into the tape. When you go to their website, you see a lot of Ms. Glick’s work. You also get an idea of her own orientation. When I look at the United States government, I see an enemy dating back over seven decades. Ms. Glick doesn’t. She constantly argues that the Americans need to recognize the security value of Israel to the the United States and pushes incessantly for an American-Israeli alliance.

In her latest article, it seems, while not necessarily abandoning that stance, she attacks Netanyahu for bowing to Obama's various demands regarding the blockade of Gaza, pointing out that in doing so, Netanyahu is violating international law that requires Israel to structure a blockade in a certain way. And she goes after the obvious bagman for the Obama administration in the Israeli government, Ehud Barak. She points out, as I have elsewhere, that Barak's withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000 led to the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and the horrible security situation in the north we have now. But she goes further, giving respectability to the allegations of corruption within the Sharon administration; that the Jewish village of Elai Sinai in the Gaza Strip was to be turned into another casino for the PA (the one in Jericho having been destroyed in fighting in 2000) - with Martin Schlaf, the Austrian Jewish businessman, having the sole license to develop casinos in the State of Israel, a deal worked out by Avi Weissglass, a lawyer for both Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon - at the same time. It's not that any of this information is terribly new. Barry Chamish exposed a lot of it over seven years ago. A French speaking engineer who lives in Hebron tried desperately to stop the expulsion of Gush Qatif in 2005 using this information - and the Israel High Court of (in)Justice stopped up its ears and refused to listen. After exhuming the stink of corrupt Israeli politics, after going after Netanyahu with the equivalent of a woman chasing a stupid husband around the kitchen with a rolling pin, she steps back, exercising that restraint she is known for and says, "Netanyahu knows the folly of his decisions."

And that is the point. She is unwilling to go further, even in the face of the obvious servility of Netanyahu to the Dark Prince of the Setting Potomac Sun.

With a stance like this, she cannot argue for the real independence of Israel, or Israeli policy, from the bankrupt régime in Washington. Her videos can poke fun at Israel’s leftist media, they can poke fun at the terrorists, our Arab or Persian enemies, and even suggest that Obama himself is a Jew-hater, or that the soon to be departing Rahm Emanuel is a kapo in the White House. But the piper, the Center for Security Policy in Washington, ultimately calls her tune. She may agree with that tune or not. This I cannot say. But I can say that she is unable to contemplate separating us in Israel from them, the enemies of the State of Israel and the Jewish people in the United States government. In just the same way that Haim Weizmann was tied to the British eight decades ago, Caroline Glick is tied to the Americans. And like his tie to the British was deleterious to us, Glick’s tie to the United States is ultimately deleterious to us as well.

Just as Arutz Sheva has certain limits that they cannot cross, so does Caroline Glick. And that is what this article is really about. Her limits. Fortunately for us, she is not in power. Unfortunately for us, people who are far more subservient to Israel’s enemies in the United States government than she is are in power.

But let's end this on a happy note: a belated lesson from Passover from Latma TV.