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THE LIZARD NAMED OZ

by Lee Kaplan

We're off to see The Lizard Named Oz:
Professor Avraham Oz of U. Haifa encourages fellow academics to hate Israel

"We get up at twelve and start to work at one,
Take an hour for lunch, and then at two we're done,
Jolly good fun.

Ha-ha-ha!
Ho-ho-ho!
And a couple of tra-la-las,
That's how we laugh the day away,
In the Merry Old Land of Avraham Oz".
–– From the Wizard of Oz (changes by this writer).

Left-wing academics and authors are like the weather: usually all wet and something the rest of us can do little about. They suffer from a narcissism that precludes any social conscience toward fellow Jews. In other words, they frequently transliterate Rabbi Hillel's question about a Jew's social conscience that "If I am only for myself, what am I?" with the new idea that "If I am only for myself, then facts, history and the Jewish people no longer matter." Their links to Judaism almost always seem to be only to claim credibility because they are of Jewish descent speaking for the anti-Semites as they undermine the Jewish Nation and the Jewish People therein, renaming those "other Jews" as "Zionists" instead of "Jews" in the same euphemistic style as their Arab counterparts. That is, the "good Jews" do what Arab racists want in hopes of living among them as equals, but it's those "Zionists" who make war with the Arabs, their "victims," not the other way around.

Anti-Israel academics and other mouthpieces for the Arabs have it comparatively easy; they don't work on a kibbutz picking oranges, nor do they stand guard a sniper's bullet away from Hizballah terrorists. In fact, they denigrate the Arab sniper's intended target. Anti-Israel academics don't work in hospitals, especially ones that care for the victims of Arab terrorist attacks. They bemoan violence in self-defense against crazed Arabs, but use platitudes like "legitimate resistance" for terrorist attacks. Above all, they willingly advocate by their support of an Arab terrorist regime in Judea and Samaria the dispossession of property, homes and rights-not to mention the blood –– of fellow Jews whenever Arabs claim those Jews have usurped Arab entitlement (and Arab entitlement is always whatever the Jews in Israel have achieved through hard work, just ask any Arab in the Palestinian Authority since Israel for most of them has no "right to exist").

Avraham Oz, a professor in the Department of Theatre & Drama Studies at the University of Haifa, has the backbreaking work of translating various Shakespearean plays into Hebrew. The rest of the time he bashes Israel as a member of the "Peace Movement" by denigrating Israeli soldiers and the Jewish people in general in the most vile way, even those murdered by Arab terrorism, and he organizes petitions and discussion logs for his fellow Israel-bashing academics worldwide. This Wizard Named Oz started a chat board at the University of Haifa that accuses Israel of all manner of false atrocities and murderous conduct and even routinely, among its entries, includes Holocaust denial to strengthen the Arabs' position of the illegitimacy of Israel's Jews to claim victimization that led to the founding of Israel. The Wizard Named Oz does this right on the taxpayer-supported University of Haifa's internet server. The question is, why this "professor" routinely repeats the official planned propaganda of the Arab world against Israel as if he worked in the propaganda ministries of the Palestinian Authority and why he so actively encourages other academics to do likewise.

Most anti-Israel activists like Professor Avraham Oz don't even bother with the slight labor required of true academics and scientists, the hours and hours of serious research, empirical study and the desire to arrive at truth. He has a Greek chorus of these like-minded academic Israel haters who can agree with his subversive support for the real terrorists forming the new Iran next door to Jerusalem. Tenure guarantees him and many of his cronies permanent employment and a bully pulpit (usually at Israeli taxpayer expense), so they are free to dabble at will in formulating all manner of peace theories that ignore the facts on the ground. Arabs will pass out candy every time a Jew is murdered, they will raise their kids in Jew-hatred and insist Jews cannot live in a Palestinian state, but the Wizard Named Oz and his anti-Israeli leftist crowd of Munchkins call Israel, with its own established Arab minority, an "apartheid" state and even urge boycotting it.

As mentioned, like the Wizard of Oz, the Wizard Named Oz has his little Munchkins from within Israel's radical academic left whom he organizes via petitions and the Internet on a regular basis to attack the Jewish state and reinforce Arab accusations against the Jews. These members of the Wizard Named Oz's own clique of Munchkins travel back and forth to America and Europe where there are abundant anti-Semitic groups that will fund them to speak about the "peace process" that the attendees usually know is really a "war process," "peace" being a nice word to use in polite company as support for Arab terrorists and is always redefined by them as "resistance."

You're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard Named Oz,
You'll find he is a Whiz of a Wiz if ever a Wiz there was,
If ever, oh ever, a Wiz there was the Wizard Named Oz is one because
Because, because, because, because, because.
Because of the wonderful things he does,
You're off the see the wizard, the Wonderful Wizard Named Oz!
–– The Munchkin Song (changes by this writer)

So, you may ask, "What's wrong with freedom of speech?" Isn't that all that Avraham Oz is practicing?

Avraham Oz started a petition in October 2002 on a website called The Handstand,[1] just before the US entry into Iraq that many other leftist eggheads in Israeli academia signed, wherein he wrote the following comment:

You see, Avraham Oz, in all his wisdom as the Wizard Named Oz, who resides in his own Fantasyland of Avraham Oz at U. Haifa, consistently spouts buzz word creations from some of the nineteen propaganda ministries in the totalitarian Palestinian Authority. (i.e., "state terrorism" or "cycle of violence" both created to deconstruct Israeli self-defense and excuse Arab terrorism). Those ministries use a propaganda technique[2] that was aptly described by the late philosopher Jacques Ellul in his book The Formation of Men's Attitudes as a concept that ..."seeks to induce action, adherence, and as little thought as possible. According to propaganda, it is useless, even harmful for man to think ..... Action must come directly from the depths of the unconscious"...(i.e. like Holocaust denial on a U. Haifa chat board, or false accusations of ethnic cleansing all in the name of "peace"). Ellul continued, "This is the basic condition of the political organization of the modern world, and propaganda is the instrument to attain this effect. An example that shows the radical devaluation of thought is the transformation of words in propaganda; there, language, the instrument of the mind, becomes 'pure sound,' a symbol directly evoking feelings and reflexes. This is one of the most serious disassociations that propaganda causes. Propaganda sometimes deliberately separates from man's real world the verbal world that it creates; it tends to destroy man's conscience."

The Wizard Named Oz, a.k.a. Avraham Oz, began a fantasy scenario that once the US attacked Saddam Hussein, the Israeli government in a fit of "ethnic cleansing" would deport the entire Palestinian population from Israel, even those Arab-Israelis who are citizens of the country! He accused Israel of other propaganda buzz words, "ethnic cleansing." The Arabs keep claiming they are being ethnically cleansed as their population in Gaza and Yesha increases almost exponentially. The Wizard Named Oz's fellow academic Munchkins all gladly signed on to the idea, though. As Philosopher Jacob Needleman once said, "It's good to be open-minded, but not so open that your brains fall out."

I could wile away the hours,
Conferrin' with the flowers,
Consultin' with the rain
And my head I'd be scratchin'
While my thoughts were busy hatchin'
–– If I only had a brain –– Scarecrow's song

Like the famed Wizard of Oz, the Wizard Named Oz is also all smoke and mirrors. For fifteen years since the start of Oslo the Arabs have made relentless war not only with terror attacks, but through propaganda and hate within the university systems of both Israel and America. Israeli academics like to emulate the Americans, so being anti-Israel is another feather in the cap of anyone's academic or literary career if one has no soul and wants to be recognized in the USA. Create your own reality like Avraham Oz and his anti-Israel academic cronies, become your own Wizard Named Oz, and lecture around the world and on the Internet that it's all Israel's fault and only, if only, Israel would deport more Jews from Yesha and give the Arabs what they want, if only Israel would stop being a Jewish state and defend itself to please the "Zionists", then there would be peace. The izard Named Oz will insist this no matter what proof or history is presented before him and his taxpayer-supported chat board groupies will back it all up.

Well, he says the terrorists, who have the backing of the Palestinian Authority, of the majority of the Arab population there as a whole according to their own polls, and who support terrorism against the Jews (they elected Hamas for more than just Fatah corruption) are just a "few extremists." Israel has had 60 years of "just a few extremists" from the Arab world and Israel has thousands of dead Jews from her civilian population as a result (many women and children[3]). Israel survived those 60 years because of the bravery of the IDF, not because of the dopey and inconsiderate actions of eggheads profs in Israeli universities. The Wizard Named Oz likes to accuse the Israeli government of "ethnic cleansing" of Arabs, another Arab propaganda term that originated against the Serbian Christians in Bosnia and Kosovo.[4]

The Wizard Named Oz also likes to invoke other Arab propaganda lines to demoralize the country and undermine the IDF.

Ah, yes, Israel is guilty of war crimes, another trope of the PA propaganda ministries where maybe the Wizard Named Oz really wants to practice his literary skills. And, of course, Israel is responsible for Arab terrorism against itself: "A gigantic army tramples over a small nation. Soldiers performing mass arrests, scaring little children, humiliating their parents, fostering a new generation of suicide bombers, and ensuring the continuation of the conflict for posterity." (note: the italicized terms are all used in PA propaganda despite no compelling evidence there is any truth to it other than constant repetition in the Media. There also is no Palestinian "nation" yet, due to Arab terrorism and Israel is the size of a postage stamp compared to the Arab world.)

The Wizard Named Oz also has encouraged and praised students who desert from the IDF and is alleged to have called Israeli soldiers Nazis (Nazi terminology in describing Jews in Israel is another favorite tactic of PA propaganda ministries).

Not to be outdone by Ward Churchill[5] in America, who referred to all the World Trade Center victims on 9/11 as "Little Eichmanns," then rightfully lost his job due to plagiarism and faulty scholasticism, the Wizard Named Oz has also referred to the Israeli soldiers who serve in the Territories as "Little Eichmanns " (his only skill seems to be to copy anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rhetoric from Arab and American anti-Israel propagandists to claim as his own) and he is alleged to have hung a Palestinian flag over the campus. Since Adolf Eichmann[6] was held as the top responsible administrator for the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust, no doubt the Wizard Named Oz figures he has assured his place among the best propagandists and Jew haters in the world, a position he may aspire to in a new state of Palestine if the University of Haifa ever sees fit to actually get rid of him.

The fact is The Wizard Named Oz is so obnoxious with his colleagues and has attracted so many complaints from students (Little Eichmanns serving in the IDF, no doubt) that he was transferred to the equivalent of Siberia at the University of Haifa, otherwise known as the "General Studies Department," losing his post in the literature and theater department. "General Studies" in the Israeli university system is equivalent to departments where serious academic research in lieu of opinions and politics isn't that common - like physical education or ethnic studies. Faculty are sent to this department when the University cannot fire them, but has no real use for them.

Ah, well, it's the University system in Israel and we're all dancing down the Yellow Brick Road with the Hizballah, Hamas and Fatah all around us, oh my!

You're not in Kansas any more, Dorothy. Welcome to the Land of Avraham Oz, the Wizard Named Oz.

Lee Kaplan is an undercover investigative journalist, who writes on foreign policy, Israel, Iraq, and -- in particular -- on the growing Islamic presence in the American universities, economic institutions and politics.

This article was distributed by IsraCampus, an organization devoted to exposing Israeli academic haters of the Jewish state. Contact them by email at isracampus@gmail.com. This article is archived on their website at
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/ Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Avraham%20Oz.htm