Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 07, 2015

10/07 Links Pt1: Abbas Calls for Murder, Palestinians Attack; Jerusalem Mayor – Armed and Dangerous

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Abbas Calls for Murder, Palestinians Attack

The terrorists did not need permission from Hamas leaders to murder the first Jews they ran into. The inflammatory rhetoric of Abbas and Palestinian Authority (PA) officials and media outlets was sufficient to drive any Palestinian to go out and murder Jews.
Instead of condemning the murder of the Jews, the PA denounced Israel for killing the two Palestinians who carried out the Jerusalem attacks.
The Palestinian Authority and its leaders are in no position today to condemn the murder of any Jews, simply because the PA itself has been encouraging such terrorist attacks through its ceaseless campaign of incitement against Israel.
The PA is playing a double game: it tells the world that it wants peace and coexistence with Israel; meanwhile it incites Palestinians against Israel, driving some to set out with guns and knives to murder Jews.
Although Abbas has repeatedly stated during the past few years that he does not want another intifada against Israel, his statements and actions show that he is doing his utmost to spark another wave of violence, in order to invite international pressure on Israel.

A Method Behind Palestinian Madness

This slow buildup to a third intifada is about anti-Jewish hate not complaints over settlements or borders. It also shows that any further Obama administration pressure on Israel to further empower Abbas — whose own Fatah Party was behind the shooting of the Henkins — would also be madness. Just as Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 enabled Hamas to create a terror base there, so, too, would any retreats from the West Bank make possible the establishment of more safe havens for terrorists. Though neither side wants the status quo, such an alternative is unthinkable.
The Obama administration continues to push for more “daylight” between its stance and that of Israel and snubs Netanyahu while refusing to condemn Abbas or to respond to the killings of Jews with anything more than mealy-mouthed statements urging both sides to show restraint. But that’s exactly what Abbas is counting on as he subtly orchestrates a wave of bloody terrorism. Abbas also knows that international indifference to the murder of Jews fueled by anti-Semitism continues to work in his favor to create more pressure on Israel rather than on the Palestinians. The only way to halt the bloodshed is an unambiguous American stance in favor of Israel’s right to take tough action to suppress terrorism and a clear statement to Abbas to either accept Netanyahu’s offer of talks without preconditions or to forget about further U.S. backing.
Unfortunately, Abbas knows that Obama is more interested in his feud with Netanyahu and appeasement of Iran than in standing with democratic Israel against terrorist murderers. That means the blame for the rising toll of bloodshed from Palestinian terrorism in the coming week will belong as much to an indifferent Obama as it does to Abbas.

NY Post Ed: Israel-bashing just came back to haunt the State Deptartment

The administration has called the attack a tragic mistake. But Lee recalled Israel’s August 2014 shelling of a UN school in Gaza — which State immediately labeled “disgraceful,” adding: “The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians.”
Lee asked: Does that policy still hold?
Toner was at a complete loss. He haltingly apologized for the loss of life, stressed that the United States avoids civilian casualties, said any further comment would be “too much speculation” and begged Lee to “give me a pass [while] we wait for the investigation to run its course.”
That’s a pretty reasonable position, actually. But it flies in the face of last year’s instantaneous criticism of Israel — made long before any investigation had even begun.
Enemies like the Taliban, Hamas and Hezbollah quite intentionally hide among civilians, using them as human shields.
Innocents die in all wars — but the fog of war is rarely more dense than when the other side is deliberately trying to make you kill civilians.
Israel’s known that for a long time — and now the Obama administration is painfully coming to learn it, too.

This is called a "peaceful demonstration" according to the Palestinian Authority

The PA's official Wafa news agency has a photo essay entitled "Israeli army suppress a peaceful demonstration condemning violations against Al-Aqsa and the holy sites near the Kalandia crossing 10-6-2015."

Here is every image they showed of the "peaceful demonstration:"

When will the world realize that when Palestinian officials use words like "peaceful demonstration" (and "storming Al Aqsa" and dozens of other stock phrases) they are lying through their teeth?

Here is video of the same riots:

And this video of the riots from a distance shows that ordinary Palestinian Arabs, only meters away from the stone throwing, are not the least bit concerned that the supposedly trigger-happy Israeli forces will do anything to them:

There's also this interesting tidbit from The Guardian showing that the PA is solidly behind the riots:

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has warned Palestinians not to fall into the trap of “militarising” the current escalation of violence as confrontations with Israeli security forces appeared to spread on Tuesday.

“We don’t want a military and security escalation with Israel,” Abbas said at a meeting of Palestinian officials, according to the official news agency Wafa. “We are telling our security forces, our political movements, that we do not want an escalation, but that we want to protect ourselves.”

Although Abbas’s comments were initially interpreted as an indication he was moving to calm the situation – amid reports that Israeli and Palestinian security officials planned to meet on Tuesday evening – a Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) statement issued later seemed to undermine those hopes.

“Saluting the masses of Palestinians who are confronting the occupation,” the statement said, before calling on Palestinians to “unite for an act of national defence”.

TOI reports:

A teenage Palestinian woman stabbed an Israeli man near the Lions’ Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem on Wednesday morning and was then shot at the scene.

She was shot by her victim, who was stabbed in the back, police said.

“Upon arriving, I saw two patients,” MDA paramedic Aharon Adler told The Times of Israel. “One of them, an approximately 30-year-old male with stab wounds to his upper body, fully conscious; alongside him, a young woman with gunshot wounds. According to him, she came up and stabbed him twice from behind. And then she was shot.

“Her condition was worse than his,” he added.

Arab media immediately went into denial, but they couldn't quite make up their minds as to how to lie about this.

Ma'an Arabic quotes one of those famous "eyewitnesses" who says that the woman had no knife at all and the "settler" attacked her and then shot her.

Palestine Press Agency, without elaborating, claims in its headline that "settler tried to rape a girl" and also that she had no weapon.

The lie that will likely win the battle is from Palestine Today, which claims (again according to "eyewitnesses") that the "settler" tried to remove the girl's hijab. She responded by lightly stabbing him and then he had the excuse he wanted to shoot and kill her.

Other variants say that he tried to remove her hijab but she wasn't armed but he shot her when she fought back.

Expect the English language pro-jihad sites like Electronic Intifada to christen one of these stories as the official one any minute now.

Egyptians angry over TV news ticker calling murdered Jews "martyrs"

Egyptian satellite channel CBC has come under attack for how it described Jews murdered in Jerusalem.

The news ticker says "Martyrdom of settlers and wounding of two others as well as the death of the attacker in Jerusalem."

Many newspaper articles and social media lit up with anger at Egyptian TV daring to call innocent Jews who were murdered "martyrs" and the Arab attacker as merely "dead."

The TV network apologized for the error, but that is not enough for the angry Arabs who are convinced that the Egyptian government is tilting towards the Jews and against the heroes who murder them.

The irony, of course, is that by definition practically no Arabs are "martyrs" but the innocent Jews being slaughtered really are. Martyrdom applies to those murdered because of their faith, and as we have seen, the Jews being stabbed and run over are chosen purely because they are Jews, not because they are "Zionists" or "Israelis" or "settlers."

Unfortunately, Jews are uncomfortable using an accurate term for their martyrs and they cede the emotional language to those who wholeheartedly support the murderers. And the casual news consumer is more sympathetic to stories that use emotional language.

Don't worry, though: one Israeli publication freely uses the word "martyr":

Martyrs are not heroes because they died, but rather because their humanity is manifested in their dreams, their connection to the land, their resilience in holding on to life in the face of oppression... The martyrs were not born to take part in a project of martyrdom, they were born to take part in the project called life. They sanctify life by sacrificing themselves for it.

Sorry - this is the anti-Israel +972 magazine, and they are talking about Arabs as well, not Jews. Ultra-left publications like +972 doesn't give a damn about Jews who are murdered except to use them as an excuse to bash Jews. But Arabs who are unfortunately killed while rioting are "martyrs."

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Disgusting Arab video encouraging murdering Jews

This seems to have been released today, reportedly from Gaza. It shows an Arab youth who murders two stereotypical Jews, one in Chassidic dress and the other wearing a tallit (Jewish prayer shawl.)

It is as pure an example of incitement and antisemitism as you can imagine.

It is apparently from Hamas.

10/06 Links: Hamas cell that killed Naama and Eitam Henkin Arrested; Israel is Not Palmyra!

From Ian:

IDF Blog: Security Forces Arrest Terrorists who Murdered 2 Israeli Civilians

The ISA, IDF and Israel Police have arrested members of the cell that perpetrated the shooting attack that killed 2 Israeli civilians on October 1. Rabbi Eitam Henkin and his wife Naama Henkin were murdered in front of their 4 children, the oldest of whom being 9 years old. The detainees have been transferred for investigation by the ISA and have admitted their involvement in the murder of the Henkins.
The cell – affiliated with Hamas in Nablus – numbered five terrorists, each of which had a defined role. One terrorist checked the route. Three terrorists were in the attacking vehicle – a driver and two attackers. The cell commander was not in the vehicle. Several additional suspects have been arrested on suspicion of aiding the cell.
The cell commander was Raeb Ahmed Muhammad Alivi, born in 1978, and active in Hamas’s military wing. He recruited the members of the cell, instructed them and provided them with weapons.

Hamas cell that killed Naama and Eitam Henkin nabbed

The video below shows the arrest of one of the suspects at a hospital in Nablus, Channel 2 television said Monday night. The TV report said the attack was likely curtailed when one of the five was accidentally shot by another cell member and the gunmen sped away in order to seek medical assistance for him. That may be why the four Henkin children — aged 9, 7, 4 and 4 months — were not harmed.
The Shin Bet named the cell leader as Ragheb Ahmad Muhammad Aliwi, a previously jailed Hamas fighter from Nablus, who recruited the other four terrorists, instructed them how to carry out attacks and provided them with their weapons.
The other four were named as Yahia Muhammad Naif Abdullah Hajj Hamad, who carried out the shooting itself; Samir Zahir Ibrahim Kusah, the driver of the car who is linked to previous terror attacks; Karem Lufti Fatahi Razek, the gunman who was wounded by gunfire from one of his fellow cell members during the attack; and Zir Ziad Jamal Amar, who cleared the way for the car to carry out the attack.
All four are Hamas activists from Nablus.
Razek was arrested in a hospital in Nablus by an undercover police unit. The other suspects were arrested at their homes and other locations. (h/t Bob Knot)

Hamas: Members’ arrests in Henkin murders ‘honorable’ for us

Hamas welcomed on Monday the Israeli announcement that five members of its organization were arrested for murdering Naama and Eitam Henkin in the West Bank on Thursday — and again praised the terror attack, vowing there would be more.
In a statement issued Monday night after the Shin Bet security service revealed the arrest of a five-member Hamas cell in Nablus, the terror group did not explicitly take responsibility for the attack that left the couple dead in front of their young children, but promised that “this cell is not the first and will not be the last.”
“The occupation’s announcement of the arrest of the Nablus cell is an honorable announcement for our people and their resistance,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

UN Watch: State Dept. left dumbstruck when confronted over criticism of Israel in light of Afghan hospital shelling

U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner appeared dumbstruck yesterday when AP reporter Matt Lee, following up on our tweet from Saturday, asked him why the State Department said last year that it was “appalled” by Israel’s “disgraceful” shelling, after it accidentally hit a school in Gaza, yet took an altogether different approach this weekend when the U.S. accidentally shelled an Afghan hospital.
Following the U.S. bombing on Saturday in Kunduz that killed 19, I compared it with last year’s bizarre statement by the Obama Administration, which was more akin to a typically-prejudiced UN reaction:
Our spotlight on this hypocrisy got picked up quickly and was sent to AP correspondent Matt Lee.
At the next day’s daily State Department briefing in Washington, Lee pointedly asked it if were still Administration policy that, as they told Israel last year, “the suspicion that militants are operating nearby a site like this … does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of innocent civilians.”
Evidently startled by the question, deputy spokesperson Mark Toner –looking down and stumbling over his words, as you can see in this video — struggled desperately for several minutes yet failed to explain in any way the glaring inconsistency exposed by recent events. (h/t Yenta Press)

After Blasting Israel, State Department Doesn’t Immediately Condemn Afghan Hospital Bombing

.@Amnesty's complicity with the Tamimis' support of terror (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

(Guest post from Petra Marquardt-Bigman @WarpedMirrorPMB - my last post before the holiday)

Amnesty International wants to ignore that supporting Bassem Tamimi means supporting terror

For the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh, their activism and their supposedly “non-violent resistance” is a family affair. This was not only illustrated in the fawning tribute to the Tamimi clan featured as a New York Times Magazine cover story in March 2013, but it is also reflected in many other reports, and Bassem Tamimi himself as well as his supporters have often emphasized the important role of his family.

Indeed, for Bassem Tamimi – who has Amnesty International’s unwavering support – it is the Palestinians’ “destiny” to “resist”, it is an integral part of Palestinian “culture” and “history.” While Bassem Tamimi is hailed by Amnesty as a “human rights activist” worthy of unquestioning support, he has consistently emphasized that he regards all forms of “resistance” as legitimate, and he has frequently explained that his own (current) preference for protests and rock-throwing is a choice prompted by purely pragmatic considerations.

Neither the fact that the rock-throwing advocated so passionately by Bassem Tamimi has resulted in the death of more than a dozen Israelis, nor the Tamimi clan’s openly stated refusal to condemn terrorism and their insistence that they have “the right to armed resistance,” nor the well-known fact that Tamimi clan member Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem, remains “much-loved in Nabi Saleh” has deterred Amnesty International from ‘adopting’ Bassem Tamimi’s “village of Nabi Saleh as a community-at-risk.” Indeed, as Edith Garwood, the Amnesty International USA Country Specialist - Israel/OPT/State of Palestine, declared in a recent message, “AI groups globally work on behalf of the village long term including here in the U.S.”

It is time to spell out that Amnesty International is working on behalf of people who share and promote Ahlam Tamini’s vile ideology and her continuing incitement to and glorification of terrorism.

In the aftermath of the recent lethal terror attacks against Israeli Jews, Bassem Tamimi’s wife shared a post on Facebook (FB) that reads translated from the original Arabic (all translations courtesy of Ibn Boutros):

“A point of light:Each stage has its special form of resistance, and the signs of this stage have clearly appeared in the method of the individual operations. They are planned by individuals, financed by individuals, prepared by individuals, and carried out by individuals.The result is the 100% success of the mission.Do not wait for an organization to organize you [or: put you into formations / register you / put limitations on you], set the time for you, command you [give you orders] and politicize you.Put your life on the line and go ahead, Allah will be with you.”

This open incitement of terrorist attacks is shared from a FB page belonging to a person who calls herself “Princess of the Free.” Both the profile picture and the cover picture displayed at the time of this writing show Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri, the terrorist who exploded himself in the crowded Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem on August 9, 2001, killing 15 civilians , including 7 children and a pregnant woman, and wounding some 130 other people.

As you can see, the “Princess of the Free” is quite popular: at the time of this writing, she has 4,988 friends and her posts are followed by 2,787 people. Among her FB friends are Bassem Tamimi as well as his wife Nariman and his famous daughter Ahed.

This screenshot from Bassem Tamimi’s FB page coincidentally shows among his FB friends the profile picture of the “Princess of the Free” (marked with a red circle) just above a photo Bassem Tamimi posted showing himself and his nephew Nizar Tamimi, a son of a sister of Bassem Tamimi who was convicted of the 1993 murder of Chaim Mizrachi and who was released in the 2011 Shalit deal.

Another Tamimi clan member released in this deal was of course the Sbarro massacre mastermind Ahlam Tamimi – and Nizar and Ahlam had been sweethearts of sorts for a while, and got married shortly after their release.

According to this FB post, Nizar Tamimi is the husband of the “Princess of the Free” – which would make the “Princess of the Free” Ahlam Tamimi.

There are a number of additional indications that the “Princess of the Free” is indeed Ahlam Tamimi. They include this picture and “poem” posted on September 19, which was “liked” by 132 people,including Nariman Tamimi, and which is signed at the bottom left corner: “The freed (prisoner) journalist Ahlam Tamimi.” The “poem” includes unmistakable allusions to the Sbarro bombing:

“Fire was lit in the bodyDon’t just stand by perplexedRemember the day the restaurant burnedRemember the day that the roof flew awayWhat prevents honor from returning?What prevents the rebels from laughing?Try and move forwardTry and planTry and carry outPrepare the mix [of explosives?]Take the axeWhat’s the plan?Believe me, with your hands onlyYou will cause a heart attack for the enemy.”

But irrespective of the question if the “Princess of the Free” is really the Sbarro massacre mastermind Ahlam Tamimi, the fact that Bassem and Nariman Tamimi as well as their daughter Ahed are FB “friends” of the “princess” and the fact that Nariman Tamimi obviously follows the page and has recently shared a post inciting more terror attacks is further evidence that the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh are not even trying to conceal their support for terrorism.

That leaves only Amnesty International trying to conceal that their support of the Tamimis and Nabi Saleh is support for murderous Jew-hatred and terrorism.

Chag sameach!

The final holidays of the season are here. This is the photo tweeted by IDF Arabic language spokesperson Avicha Adraee for the holiday of Simchat Torah (celebrated Monday in Israel, Tuesday outside):

Adraee also caused a stir yesterday by posting on Twitter and Facebook the dictionary definition of heroism and the terrorist definition of heroism, calling the terrorists who killed two Jews and injured a woman and child cowards. (I have a translation here.)

Arabic media were upset that he dared call their heroes "cowards."

Anyway, I will again not be posting from tonight until Tuesday night. For those who celebrate, have a great holiday.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

From The Economist:

IT SEEMS that the ageing politicians who appear on the official Palestine television station are in “urgent need” of a makeover. So, at least, said one of the channel’s directors in a letter to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. He proposed hiring a make-up artist, a prestigious one who has “already worked with several international stations.” Her fee, though, was $12,000 per month—roughly what the average Palestinian will earn in four years. Many such average people are distinctly unimpressed by that kind of extravagance. The document, published last month on a local website, is the latest scandal to roil Palestinian politics. In August it was a letter from an Abbas adviser, begging the foreign minister of Bahrain for $4 million to build an exclusive housing complex for Palestinian officials. Education officials, meanwhile, have been accused of selling off a batch of 1,000 medical scholarships offered by the Venezuelan government.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), the limited self-governing body in the occupied territories, has been plagued by waste, graft and accusations of both since its inception in 1994 following the Oslo accords. When auditors looked at the books three years later, they concluded that nearly 40% of the budget had been frittered away. By 2006, according to the PA’s own attorney-general, officials had embezzled some $700m.

Aman, a local watchdog group, claims that the bloated public-sector payroll includes an unknown number of “ghost employees” whose salaries line the pockets of managers and ministers. There are ghost businesses, too, like a $6m joint Palestinian-Italian venture to build a pipe factory that existed only on paper.

Asked to name the “most serious problem” in their society, 24% of Palestinians say it is corruption—only slightly below the 28% who point to the Israeli occupation. Four-fifths believe their leaders are corrupt. A new poll found that, for the first time, more than half of them want to dissolve the authority altogether. “A majority believes that it has become a burden,” said Khalil Shikaki, who carried out the poll. Perhaps not even a $12,000 makeover can help.

10/04 Links: Thousands attend funerals for Jerusalem terror victims; Inside the Mind of a J Streeter

From Ian:

Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: Why Our Leaders Are Hypocrites and Liars

We contaminate our mosques with our own hands and feet, and then blame Jews for desecrating Islamic holy sites. If anyone is desecrating Islamic holy sites, it is those who bring explosives, stones and firebombs into Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Jews who visit the Temple Mount do not bring with them stones, bombs or clubs. It is young Muslim men who are desecrating our holy sites with their "filthy feet."
These leaders, including Abbas himself, are not willing to send their own children and grandchildren to participate in the "popular struggle." They are fully responsible for sending the children of others to throw stones and firebombs at Jews. Sitting in their luxurious offices and villas in Ramallah, they demand that Israel be held responsible for cracking down on "innocent" Palestinians. Their main goal is to embarrass Israel and depict it as a state that takes tough measures against Palestinian teenagers.
These youths are not taking to the streets to fight "occupation." Their main goal is to kill or cause grievous bodily harm to Jews. When someone tosses a firebomb at a house or a car, his intention is to burn civilians alive.
It is as if our leaders are saying that throwing stones and firebombs at Jews in their cars and homes is a basic right of Palestinians. Our leaders believe Israel has no right to defend itself against those who seek to burn Jews driving in their vehicles or sleeping inside their homes. (h/t Effect)

David Horovitz: The impossible Abbas

Those who retain some sympathy for Abbas note that he is, at time of writing, maintaining his Palestinian Authority security forces’ coordination with their Israeli counterparts. They say it’s hard for him to condemn the latest acts of Palestinian terrorism because he is already widely seen by his public as an Israeli stooge. They argue that it is not Abbas inciting Palestinian terrorism, but rather Arab media reports and a relentless social media emphasis on alleged Israeli attacks at Al-Aqsa.
But the fact is that Abbas has never sought to counter his predecessor Yasser Arafat’s assertion that there were no Jewish temples in Jerusalem and thus, by extension, there is no historic legitimacy for Jewish sovereignty here. The fact is that Abbas has allowed no sense of Jewish connection to the Temple Mount to complicate the Palestinian narrative of Israeli-Jewish illegitimacy there. The fact is that Abbas never moved decisively to prevent vicious anti-Israeli incitement in the Palestinian media. The fact is that Abbas’s PA continued the practice of honoring terrorists and “martyrs.”
The fact is that Abbas, whom many in Israel have even after 2008 insistently wanted to believe is a partner for peace — including Olmert himself, to this day — has long since failed his people and ours.
The fact is that Abbas has quite deliberately fueled the flames of this latest Al-Aqsa-centered terror wave.
Bleak and bitter, paralyzed between his empathy for the settlement enterprise and his concern at Israel becoming a binational state, Netanyahu is not an easy prime minister for a Palestinian leader genuinely seeking a viable, lasting peace agreement.
But Mahmoud Abbas is no such Palestinian leader.

Honest Reporting: U.S., Russian Air Strikes Put Israeli Actions Into Perspective

Israel does not intentionally target civilians. But what about Russia? The commencement of air strikes against targets in Syria have led to accusations that President Putin’s air force is bombing indiscriminately.
A Washington Post analysis of Russian video footage says:
that the first two frames appear to only partially capture the actual strikes. The white puffs on the ground are fragmentation impacts from the bombs exploding off-screen.
While the third strike appears to have hit its target, the other two seem to be missing their intended targets, suggesting that the Russians are using “dumb” ordnance, not precision guided munitions.
And according to the UK’s minister of defense, Michael Fallon:
Our evidence indicates they are dropping unguided munitions in civilian areas, killing civilians, and they are dropping them against the Free Syrian forces fighting Assad.

.@UNRWA employee posts video glorifying stabbing and burning Jews

From the Facebook page of Abou Albaraa, who says he works for UNRWA:

This is a photo of Steven Demetre Georgiou in 1972.

Handsome devil, isn't he?

He is also known by his stage name "Cat Stevens" and is currently known under his Muslim adopted name of Yusuf Islam, but he will always be Cat Stevens to me.

In fact, one of my favorite albums as a kid - we're talking vinyl - was Tea for the Tillerman and particularly the tune Where Do the Children Play?

The reason that I am putting this gentleman into your face - a face that is not very welcome within the Jewish community, or so I suspect - is because I think that he inadvertently raises a very interesting question.

Can we appreciate an artist's art in distinction from that artist's politics?

This is a question that goes to the beginnings of political history.

I do not know how many of you are familiar with Camille Paglia, but she is, from an ideological perspective, a 60s libertarian feminist who got her fifteen minutes from a terrific dissertation that she wrote and turned into a book published in 1990 entitled, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson.

As she gathered something of a cult following through the 1990s, she took to writing semi-popular cultural-critical analyses, some of which came together in a 1994 collection called Vamps and Tramps: New Essays.

It has been a long time since I have read that book, but as I recall there was a segment in one of the essays in which she discusses knock-down-drag-out-fights-to-the-death with other feminist graduate students at Yale toward the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s.

(I would love to have been a fly on the wall.}

She talks about being at a particular graduate student party in New Haven, at the time, in which someone made the insidious mistake of putting Mick Jagger's Under My Thumb on the turntable thus resulting in a lesbian-feminist-graduate-student brawl! I do not know how much actual violence there was - we are talking about graduate students, after all - but there was plenty of yelling, screaming, and pulling of hair, you can be sure.

This is what Paglia's cohort at Yale objected to and, in my opinion, for perfectly good reasons:

The squirmin' dog who's just had her day

Under my thumb

A girl who has just changed her ways

It's down to me, yes it is

The way she does just what she's told

Down to me, the change has come

She's under my thumb

Ah, ah, say it's alright

Under my thumb

A siamese cat of a girl

Under my thumb

She's the sweetest, hmmm, pet in the world

It's down to me

The way she talks when she's spoken to

Down to me, the change has come,

She's under my thumb.

You can hear that tune in your head, but the lyrics are vile.

Because these are Mick Jagger's lyrics, however, the misogynist - or former misogynist - gets a pass, which I take to be a very obvious example of politically correct left-leaning hypocrisy.

I do not know that Paglia appreciated this song in particular, but what she argued is that any individual work of art must stand on its own integral virtues. Whatever anyone might think of Mick Jagger's sexism in 1965 or 1966, when he wrote Under My Thumb, should it influence how we consider his other contributions?

Should we, for example, not enjoy Satisfaction because of Under My Thumb?

The same question, of course, goes to Cat Stevens.

Father and Son is, in my estimation, an absolutely terrific tune and one that I listened to many times long before Mr. Georgiou transmogrified himself from Cat Stevens to Yusuf Islam. And, heck, it would not bother me in the least that he converted to Islam if he had not also justified the Iranian fatwa of death on the head of author Salman Rushdie. In a conversation with students at Kingston University, London, in 1989, when asked about the Iranian Rushdie fatwa, Yusuf Islam said, "He must be killed. The Qur'an makes it clear – if someone defames the prophet, then he must die."

Really? Well, OK, then.

I honestly do not give a rat's tushky about "the prophet."

But does Yusuf Islam's regressive immorality inherently detract from Father and Son?

That is the question.

The same question, of course, goes to Roger Waters of BDS fame and his hugely popular band, Pink Floyd.

The first album that I ever bought as a kid, besides a Beatles album, was Dark Side of the Moon.

For many years I adored Pink Floyd, so you can imagine how disheartening it was when I learned that lead singer and lyricist, Roger Waters, is an anti-Semitic anti-Zionist. For so many years I had no idea, but there it is.

But does this mean that Wish You Were Here is not a great album or that Shine On You Crazy Diamond is not a great tune?

I ask these questions not because I have any particular interest in redeeming such people in your hearts, but because I want to know what you think. I want to know what you think because, on this question, I am not certain what I think.

I do know, however, that I can never listen to such music in the same way again and that is a terrible shame.

The cliché is that you can never go home again... the cliché is true.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.